CHAPTER XXXII.

HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED (_Continued_).

Trotting speed first supposed to be an accident—Then, that it came from the runner—William Wheelan’s views—Test of powers of endurance—The term “thoroughbred” much abused—Definition of “thoroughbred”—How trotters may be made “thoroughly bred”—How to study pedigrees—Reward offered for the production of a thoroughbred horse that was a natural pacer—The trotter more lasting than the runner—The dam of Palo Alto—Arion as a two-year-old—Only three stallions have been able to get trotters from running-bred mares—“Structural incongruity”—The pacer and trotter inseparable—How to save the trot and reduce the ratio of pacers—Development a necessity—Table proving this proposition—The “tin cup” policy a failure—Woodburn at the wrong end of the procession.

Before the question of speed in the trotter began to be considered, either from a historical or a philosophical standpoint, or, in other words, a question involving scientific truths, there was a universal concurrence in the idea that speed at the trot was an accident and that there was nothing of inheritance or heredity about it. This idea was greatly strengthened by the performances of such horses as Boston Horse, Rattler, Edwin Forrest, Dutchman, Confidence, Moscow, Pelham, Flora Temple, Tacony, etc., whose origin and blood were wholly unknown, while they were on the turf. Contemporaneous with these there were such splendid performers as Topgallant, Screwdriver, Lady Suffolk, Sally Miller, O’Blennis and many others that were known to be descended from Messenger, a horse that was looked upon by everybody as a “thoroughbred.” Hence, the conclusion that the flying trotter was either an accident in breeding, or his speed qualities came from the English running horse. The fact that such champion trotters, in their day, as Pelham, Highland Maid, etc., had originally been pacers and changed from the lateral to the diagonal gait was sedulously concealed from the public, during their day, and only after they had passed away was this bar-sinister in their origin brought to light. Doubtless this same fact might have been developed in the origin of Edwin Forrest and others, if action had been taken in time. In that day—say the first half of this century—it is not remarkable that the plebeian origin of some of our most famous early trotters was concealed, for everybody was claiming a thoroughbred ancestry, and the more famous the performer the more certain he was to be furnished with a thoroughbred pedigree.

“Whatever is of value in the trotter must come from the runner, and whatever is of value in the runner must come from the Arab,” was the view that was universally accepted when I was a boy. And yet there were thousands of fast trotters and fast pacers in this country long before the first running horse was brought from England, and England itself was abundantly supplied with horses several hundred years before there was a horse in Arabia. These two facts are historical, and the dates make them incontrovertible. Some forty or fifty years ago William Wheelan, a successful trainer and driver of trotting horses in this country, took some trotters over to England, to try his “luck,” as others had done before him, in making matches and winning stakes. He was quite successful, and when he came home he was kept busy answering questions about English horses and why they did not have more trotters there. He replied that “there were plenty of horses that could trot as well or better than our American horses, if they were trained; they had plenty of blood and most of them good limbs and feet, with all the substance that was needed.” This made William Wheelan an authority, and his opinion was quoted all over the land; which went to prove that the way to breed the trotter was to get plenty of running blood into his veins. About this time the English running horse Trustee was bred on a famous trotting mare, Fanny Pullen, a daughter of Winthrop Messenger, of Maine, and the produce was the gelding Trustee, the first to trot twenty miles within the hour, or at least the first to make that distance regularly and to rule. This gave a tremendous “boost” to running blood, as everybody except Hiram Woodruff ascribed the result to the great powers of the imported running horse. All subsequent experiences fully demonstrated that Hiram Woodruff, although alone, was right; for although Trustee’s blood commingled more kindly with trotting blood than most of the other running horses, he left no trotters but this one. The highest rate of speed of which this gelding was capable was about 2:40, and at last, in a race of mile heats with some fifth-rate old pelter, at Cincinnati, Ohio, on a very hot day, he fell exhausted on the track and died from the effects of the heat. But the great fame of being the only horse able to trot twenty miles within the hour did not long remain with this son of imported Trustee. Five others have done the same thing, viz., Captain Magowan, Controller, John Stewart, Mattie Howard, and Lady Fulton, all of whom went faster than Trustee, except Lady Fulton.

There have been many crucial tests of the “staying qualities” of running blood in the trotter, as against the trotter without any running blood, in which the running blood has uniformly been worsted. The last of these which I now recall was a match for two thousand dollars between Scotland, a half-bred son of imported Bonnie Scotland, and Lizzie M., by Thomas Jefferson, and out of a pacing mare. The race was two-mile heats, best three in five—a very unusual race, and admirably adapted to test the staying powers of the contestants. Scotland was a fast and well-seasoned trotter; while the mare had, probably, a little higher flight of speed she never had been tried at such a distance, and in her breeding she was short, and had not a single drop of running blood in her inheritance. The mare won the first and second heats in 4:56—5:03, and the gelding the third heat in 4:55½, the fastest in the race, but he was not able to come again, and the last heat was won by the mare in 4:58½. This race took place at Philadelphia in 1883, and if, at that time, there still remained any advocates of “more running blood in the trotter,” they have not since been in evidence, with two or three addle-pated exceptions.

In looking back over the many years I have devoted to the literature of the horse, and especially to the breeding of the trotting horse, I can find no word in the English language that has been so much abused as the word “thoroughbred.” A minister wrote a great, pretentious book on the horse in which he maintained that the Morgan horse was a “thoroughbred.” A lawyer wrote another pretentious book in which he maintained that the trotting horse Dexter was a “thoroughbred.” With these two shining lights in the learned professions writing books on the horse and pronouncing this family or that individual “thoroughbred” without knowing the meaning of the term, we should not deal too severely with uneducated men for following their example. The minister and the lawyer evidently had always heard the term “thoroughbred” applied to what men considered the best, and when they were discussing their favorites which they considered the best, they naturally called them “thoroughbreds” without knowing what they were saying. This was more than twenty years ago, and was really the popular conception of the meaning of the term at that time. Not one man in a thousand then knew that the term had any other meaning than the individual superiority of the animal, and that it applied only to the pedigree, or concentration of blood in the veins of the animal, was quite foreign to the popular conception. After the founding of _Wallace’s Monthly_ the light began to dawn on this as well as on many other questions, and to-day the true meaning of the term is very generally understood.

To constitute a “thoroughbred” of whatever variety or species the animal must possess a certain number of uncontaminated crosses of his own breed, and this applies to all kinds of domestic animals that are bred for special uses or qualities. There is no law determining the number of these uncontaminated crosses, except the law of usage. The cattle men, I think, were the first to establish a rule on this subject, in this country, and they did it on enlightened and scientific principles. It was found in experience that the danger of atavism, or throwing back to some undesirable ancestor, was diminished in the ratio of the number of pure crosses through which the animal was descended. At two crosses it was found that there were many reversions to some type outside of the breed; at three crosses there were not so many; at four there were very few, and at five reversions had practically disappeared. While some required another cross the majority drove the stake at the fifth generation, proclaiming thereby that an animal bred through five uncontaminated generations of ancestors was free from the dangers of reversion, and hence was “thoroughly bred.” This is the formula and this is the principle, and it applies with equal propriety to the colt, the calf, the pig, the puppy, the chick, or the birdling. In this phrase “thoroughly bred” we have the origin, reason and meaning of the term “thoroughbred.” The formula of this rule, if tabulated, would show two parents: next, four grandparents; next eight great-grandparents; next sixteen ancestors and next thirty-two, making in all sixty-two ancestors, all of which must be “thoroughly bred.” This rule of breeding is not limited to the running horse alone, but applies to all the varieties of our domestic animals; and whenever the point is reached at which the danger of reversion has been overcome the animal is “thoroughly bred,” and the term “thoroughbred” applied just as properly to one kind of domestic animal as to another.

The question here arises as to whether the American Trotting Horse can be so thoroughly bred as to be entitled to be ranked as a thoroughbred trotter? This question is already affirmatively answered when we say the rule “applies to all the varieties of our domestic animals.” This is the general fact, but the trotting horse has a qualification, already determined, that serves as a fixed starting point in giving him rank. The standard as originally adopted and honestly administered was the mighty engine that wrought the revolution in breeding the trotter. It fixed a certain qualification that had to be complied with before an animal could be admitted to standard rank, and that qualification was in brief to either perform or produce a performer that could cover a mile in 2:30. It excluded no strains of blood, but it admitted the animals only that had fully demonstrated the ability to trot or to produce trotters. The standard is now antiquated, and far behind the speed of the trotters, which is a clear demonstration of the wisdom of its construction and adoption, but to this topic I will refer at another place more at length. With the standard, then, and the unmistakable evidence it furnished of the possession of what we will call “trotting blood,” we have a more definite and satisfactory starting point than can be claimed for any kind or variety of domestic animal. With this demonstrated ability to trot fully established, we can commence to count the generations of standard animals in a trotting pedigree, and if we find five generations of ancestors, with every animal standard bred, we can safely and intelligently say the animal is “thoroughly bred” as a trotting horse. With those sixty-two progenitors all legally established as standard animals, who will say this is not a thoroughbred trotting horse? He is not only thoroughbred, but he is more distinctly and completely thoroughbred than any other domestic animal, because the fifth generation of his ancestors, and the fourth and the third and the second and the first have all proved that they are either trotters or the producers of trotters. No other breed has ever been established on so good a foundation, for they have fairly won their initial honors by what they have done. But this is one degree higher and embraces one generation more than the formula usually prescribed as necessary to constitute the rank of thoroughbred. Five “generations of ancestors” do not include the representative product of those generations. The product would be the sixth generation, which is one more than the generally accepted usage requires. An animal representing five generations of standard trotting blood, complete and without contamination, is “thoroughly bred” and is justly entitled to be classified as a “thoroughbred trotting horse.” At this point of breeding it is considered that the danger of reversion is practically eliminated, and hence this distinctive classification. At the time of this writing (1897) there should be, in this country, quite a number of youngsters fully entitled to rank as thoroughbreds.

All intelligent breeders have long been aiming at this point, not merely for the name “thoroughbred,” but for the greater certainty of uniformity in producing what they want—the ability to perform; and the quality of these thoroughbred trotters must be determined by the ability to perform and the quality of each and every one of the ancestors. If each and every one of the four or five generations of ancestors was able to go out and win himself or herself, there could hardly be a doubt that the colt could do the same, but some of those ancestors may be in the standard merely from reflected honors, which are good, but not a crucial test of superiority in the individual. There is nothing like the animal that “has gone out and done it” himself, over and over again, and when we sit down to the study and comparison of pedigrees in the thoroughbred rank we find great differences in the quality of the lines of descent. The reflected honors of an uncle or an aunt are of much less value than the honor of a direct ancestor. While the blood of all the ancestors is tested blood, the individuals may not all have been tested, and hence are less certain in transmitting the true trotting instinct. While the standard has done wonders in teaching the true art of breeding, like all other human devices it has its imperfections. Just like the runner, the trotter may be strictly thoroughbred, and yet in taking after some of the imperfections of one or more of his ancestors, he may be of but little value as a performer. This truth has been verified in a thousand experiences in the runner, and it is just as liable to be verified in the trotter. Hence the supreme importance of looking well to the qualities and capacities of every animal in the inheritance.

At the very inception of the idea that the trotting horse could be bred and developed into a breed, an opinion prevailed everywhere that it could not be done. The theory that speed at the trot came from speed at the gallop was universally held and advocated. In 1868 I made a tour among the breeders and horsemen of Tennessee and Kentucky, for the purpose of gathering information about both runners and trotters. Those States were then beginning to pull themselves together after the war. At General Harding’s, among others, I was shown a large, heavy-boned colt, and the General remarked that if he did not make a race horse he would make a capital stallion to take to the West and breed on trotting mares. At Balie Peyton’s I was shown a great big, coarse horse that had run some races and won in very slow time, and that was unsound at many points. He was over sixteen hands high, and had very bad limbs. Mr. Peyton remarked that “he was too big for a race horse, but he would do well in the West as a trotting sire.” This was the remark everywhere as applied to big colts that couldn’t run. About the same time Mr. Joseph Cairn Simpson, then in the employ of a sporting paper in New York, as an editorial writer, expressed his sorrow that Hambletonian did not have a thoroughbred cross, close up, and his opinion that such a cross would have made him a much greater sire. Thus, East and West, North and South, the opinion prevailed everywhere that the way to breed the trotter was to go to the runner. This universal belief, wholly without foundation, soon generated the cry, “more running blood in the trotter,” and the instincts of all the rogues in the country were quickened to make their pedigrees conform to the popular belief of what was best. This resulted in a period of fictitious claims, for when a man had a colt out of a mare of unknown breeding the rule was to say, “dam thoroughbred,” and if the owner was unusually conscientious and knew the breeding for one or two crosses, he would give them correctly, but seldom failed to tack on two or three thoroughbred crosses that were wholly fictitious. After all my years of experience with the pedigrees of horses, it is my deliberate and candid opinion that no word in the English language has been so much abused as the word “thoroughbred.” It has been the medium of more deceptions and downright falsehoods than any other word in the vocabulary. For many years it was the word above all other words that the unscrupulous jockey employed to defraud his inexperienced victim. And if there had been no strong hand to take the improper and dishonest use of the word by the throat there would be no breed of trotters, and the whole business of breeding and developing the trotting horse would be to-day just where it was thirty years ago. The old, threadbare stock argument was in everybody’s mouth, to the effect that “Messenger was an English thoroughbred and he founded a family of trotters, hence any other English thoroughbred could do the same thing under the same circumstances.” When this ancient formula was submitted to the test it was found to be fatally unsound at both ends, as has been shown in another chapter. Messenger was found to be far short of being thoroughbred in his inheritance; forty other English thoroughbreds had been in competition with him and bred upon the same mares, yet no other English thoroughbred, in the experiences of a hundred and fifty years, ever founded a family of trotters. The two ablest advocates of “more running blood in the trotter” that this country has produced, Mr. Charles J. Foster and Mr. Joseph Cairn Simpson, when challenged to produce an English thoroughbred horse that had founded a family of trotters, conceded the whole contention by naming Bishop’s Hambletonian and Mambrino, both sons of Messenger and the principal channels through which Messenger had founded his family of trotters. This knocked all the noise out of the famous formula, and instead of the braying of an ass we have heard nothing since on this subject but an occasional and very feeble squeak of a mouse.

In the earlier portion of the period when the American Trotter was beginning to assume the shape and character of a breed, the term “thoroughbred,” meaning English racing blood, was adhered to with astonishing tenacity, as an indispensable element in the breeding of the trotter. A few men of clear and independent minds commenced to study the question in the light of experiences, and they were not long in reaching the truth; but, as a rule, the less a man knew of the question, whether a breeder or a writer, the more blatant and vociferous he was in maintaining that all trotters were dependent for their speed on the blood of the “thoroughbred English race horse.” When Maud S. made her four-year-old record and astonished the world, the acclamations of this class went up in tremendous volume pointing to the Boston blood of her grandam as the element that did it. Now, it never has been shown, and it never can be shown, that there was a single drop of Boston’s blood in her veins. Besides all this, Boston was not a thoroughbred horse, for neither his sire nor his grandam was thoroughbred. A curious phase of the interest attached to the mere word “thoroughbred” was brought out by a Catholic priest, in New Jersey, in a very cranky and ill-natured letter addressed to the editor of _Wallace’s Monthly_ protesting against the frequent use of the term “running-bred” instead of “thoroughbred.” Priests are generally educated men, but this poor man struck out into a field where he was entirely ignorant. A horse with two or three immediate and direct running crosses may be properly and truthfully called “running bred,” because that blood predominates in his veins, but to be justly and truthfully called “thoroughly bred” he must have at least five direct and distinct crosses, and each and every one of them pure and without any contamination from any other blood. As an illustration of what results from this definition of the word “thoroughbred,” we may take the very cream of our old American racing families and not one in fifty is “thoroughly bred.” American Eclipse was far short of being thoroughbred, even if we admit that Messenger was thoroughbred. Timoleon, the greatest son of Sir Archy, had an impossible and untruthful pedigree on the side of his dam. His great son Boston was short and deficient on both sides, and with these taints how could he get the great blind horse Lexington and make him a thoroughbred? These horses were distinctively “running bred,” but not technically “thoroughbred.” It is not to be presumed the priest was angry because I preferred not to use a word that conveyed an untruth and to use one that told the exact truth, for he was not qualified to judge which was true and which was not true, but like hundreds of others he feared the value of his property might be affected by the refusal to apply the term “thoroughbred” to some supposable cross in some of his pedigrees.

“More running blood in the trotter” was a “fad” that has been completely extinguished by all the experiences of later years. It was a freak that never had any foundation either in nature or in reason. No animal can transmit to his posterity qualities and capacities which he has not inherited, or which he does not possess by acquirement. This is a rule which seems to be perfectly plain to the comprehension of everybody, and in observation and experience it proves itself true every day of the year. To breed a horse that can go fast at the trotting or pacing gait we must go to the horse and the blood that has gone fast at one or the other of these gaits. It seems like a needless work to expend any time or space on what is self-evident in all human experiences. A few years ago I offered a money reward, of sufficient amount to justify some labor in a search, to any one who would report to me any thoroughbred running horse, with the proofs, that had ever made a trotting record of a mile in three minutes, and there was no response. Some years later I renewed the offer, doubling the amount of the former offer, and still there came no response. I regret now that I did not make the offer for a mile in four minutes instead of three, for I very much doubt whether there ever was a thoroughbred horse able to trot a mile in four minutes. What is the use, then, of giving further attention to the consideration of the value of thoroughbred running blood in the trotter?

But after conceding that the instinct to stick to the trot and the step of the trotter must come from the trotter, the advocates of “more running blood in the trotter” plant all their heavy guns on the proposition that running blood is needed to give the trotter more courage, endurance, and beauty of form. In all the past years we have had so many grand panegyrics on the will power and undying courage of the “courser of the desert” that they have become threadbare and have an “ancient and fish-like smell,” and we would prefer to exchange them for something more recent and practical. When we go to a race meeting and see so many contests at various distances less than a mile, a few at something over a mile, and all these merely single dashes, we naturally and justly conclude that the distance of ground to be covered in each contest is adjusted to the courage and stamina of the racers. I cannot conceive of any fairer criterion by which to determine the measure of gameness and pluck of running horses than simply to consider the distance chosen, and that for a single dash. Trainers and owners know just where each horse will quit, if hard pressed, and they will not enter him in any distance beyond the point where they know his courage will fail. With the data of distances for these single dashes already fixed for the accommodation of horses with different degrees of staying qualities, and after making a liberal allowance for age and lack of condition, we seem to have a solid foundation for a safe conclusion that the crucial test of the speed of the average race horse fails him before he reaches the first mile-post.

When the trotter starts out for his summer’s campaign he has no choice as to the length of his races, and he is not looking about for single dashes of four, five, six or seven furlongs, but enters the field boldly and throws down the glove to all the best strains of trotting and pacing blood. Every race will be mile heats, best two in three or three in five, and it often requires six, seven or eight heats before the victor is declared. This experience is repeated, week after week, during the whole season. Such a weekly experience as this, continued through twenty consecutive weeks, would probably destroy the best and stoutest running horse now living. This is the test to which the trotter is subjected, and no man can say it lacks in severity in determining his qualities as a race horse, in his stamina, his courage and his gameness. In touching this point I will here take the liberty of entering my protest against what I consider the unnecessary severity of this test. We want all these tests, and from the standpoint of the breeder we cannot progress without them, but we want them to stop short of injury to the animal. When a contest is drawn out to six, eight or ten heats, it not only becomes cruel as a sport, but it is liable to inflict irreparable injury to the soundness of the animal. Unsoundness, either external or internal, is liable to result from all such abuses. This is a dominant fact, and while we may not be able to see the injury with the eye, we are likely to see the evil results in the progeny. Animals of the kind most likely to be subjected to this over-severity of test are the hope of the future as producers, and by all means wise and possible we should seek to preserve them in their pristine soundness and vigor. As breeders we cannot afford to let them go without development and test, neither can we afford to impair or destroy their producing qualities, in the test. This can be done only by shortening the race; not the distance of ground, but the number of heats that can be trotted. With an inflexible rule that not more than five heats should be trotted in any race, and that at the conclusion of the fifth heat the money should be divided according to the places of the contestants, I would not be particular as to whether the race was for the best two in three, or the best three in five. The invariable results have been that in long-drawn-out contests of many heats there have been bargains and combinations for or against certain horses, and all managed by and in the interest of the so-called “speculators.” If this were done the combinations of the gamblers would be checkmated, the cruelty of the sport would be eliminated, and our best horses would come through the campaigns ready and fit to propagate their species.

In breeding for a particular purpose or qualification all experience goes to show that the elements entering into the new creature must be carefully selected as possessing the quality that we seek to propagate. Nobody would think of breeding a running mare to a trotting horse if he was seeking to breed a running colt. No thoughtful and intelligent man would think of breeding a running horse upon a trotting mare if he were seeking to breed a trotting colt. The runner to the runner and the trotter to the trotter has been demonstrated ten thousand times as the right way. The cross-bred or half-and-half-bred animal may be something of a trotter or something of a runner, doing neither well; and this uncertainty never can become a certainty as to which it may be till you try him. The evil of half-and-half breeding does not cease with the life of the animal, for the division in his own inheritance will manifest itself in his progeny for generations, or till it is bred out. But, strange as it may seem, there are still a few old men living who, from pride of opinion advanced in their younger days, still maintain that trotting speed must come from the “thoroughbred” and “point with pride” to the great horse Palo Alto as the complete illustration of their belief. In relation to the breeding of Palo Alto I will here tell a little story, premising that I neither accept it as true nor reject it as false, for I know nothing about it. The late Mr. William H. Wilson, of Cynthiana, Kentucky, was in many respects a remarkable man. He was full of energy and push, and his brain seemed to teem with formidable ideas, chiefly relating to his prospects, and the management of his own business. He was intelligent in horse matters, and very well informed on local horse history. He did a great deal of work for me in the way of straightening out tangled skeins, and in tracing obscure pedigrees. In this way I came to know Mr. Wilson very well, and as I never found him wrong on these questions I came to place great confidence in his word and his judgment in all pedigree matters that he had investigated. Some time about 1889, probably, he asked me to investigate the pedigree of Dame Winnie, the dam of Palo Alto, for, he said, he had every reason to believe she was not by Planet, but by a trotting-bred horse that he named, but that name has escaped me. I replied that I had not time then, but I would think about it. Some months afterward he was again in my office and he again urged the investigation. My reply was that there were some very upright and honest men in Kentucky as well as some great rogues, and if I were to undertake to investigate this pedigree the rogues could get forty men, if so many were necessary, for a bottle of whisky or a half-dollar a head, who could remember just what it was necessary to remember, and forget just what it was necessary to forget in order to prove that the mare was by Planet. I recalled my experience with suborned evidence in the past, and knew just what I might expect in the future, and so I had concluded to make no more investigations in certain portions of Kentucky until I had an opportunity to cross-examine the witnesses. Dame Winnie was a plain, common-looking mare, with nothing about her to indicate high breeding, and if we lay aside Mr. Wilson’s story and accept the pedigree as usually given she was strongly running bred, but at several points in her pedigree she fails of being thoroughbred. The internal evidence as to the breeding of this mare, brought to light in the performance of her produce, suggests very strongly the probability that she possessed some trotting blood, from some source not far removed. She has five representatives in the 2:30 list, and this of itself strongly supports Mr. Wilson’s untold story, that I would not listen to. In passing I will say I would be glad to listen to it now; for this solid foundation of experience is so stoutly corroborative of what he suggested as to justify an effort to reach the exact truth. When it was known in Kentucky that Senator Stanford had sent his representative down there to gather up a lot of “thoroughbred” mares from which to breed trotters in California, every dealer in the State had just what he wanted. He was looking for pedigrees, and it was a very easy matter to shape up the pedigrees just to suit him.

Whatever may have been the breeding of his dam, Palo Alto was a great horse, but he came to his speed slowly, and this would seem to indicate that if his dam had any trotting inheritance it was weak in the direction of attaining a high rate of speed. From the day he was weaned till the day he died he was Senator Stanford’s idol, and with this horse as an object lesson he was going to teach the world how to breed the trotter. At two years old he was driven a mile privately in 2:22¾, and his owner, feeling that his dream was realized in breeding the greatest horse the world had produced, named him “Palo Alto,” as he deemed him worthy of being at the head of the greatest breeding establishment of the world. He was in the hands of the most skillful and careful of all trainers, and the training went on without respite, year after year. When four years old he went through the Eastern circuits, winning the larger share of his purses, and making a record of 2:20¼. Now let us consider for a moment whether the Senator did not make a great mistake and select the wrong horse as the typical representative of his great establishment. In 1888 he bred a colt by Electioneer out of Lula Wilkes, grandam the famous trotting mare Lula, 2:15, by Norman, etc., intensely trotting bred, and when he was three years old he made a record of 2:16. This is better than 2:20¼ as a four-year-old, for this fellow had not to take one-half the training that Palo Alto was subjected to. The next year he bred another colt by Electioneer called Arion, out of a mare by Nutwood; she out of a sister to Voltaire, 2:20¼, by Tattler, 2:26; and she out of the famous trotting brood mare Young Portia, by Mambrino Chief; and the next dam Portia by the pacer Roebuck. This colt came out and trotted a mile in 2:10¾ as a two-year-old. The four-year-old had a great “boom” and was considered by many as the phenomenal colt of his year, but when we place his record of 2:20¼ beside the 2:16 of the three-year-old, it looks very sickly, and when we compare it with the 2:10¾ of the two-year-old it is shaded into a deathly pallor. The four-year-old is largely the result of skill and art; the two-year-old is the result of nature. Arion is the best horse, by the record, that the world has ever produced, and the Senator was mistaken in his dream. We must judge of the value of a fast performance by the degree of naturalness which it represents and the measure of its freedom from the arts of the trainer. The “born trotter” is what we want, and at two years old Arion, or any other colt, was at the right age to determine whether a fast performance was the result of nature or of art.

It is a fact well known to everybody that some trotting-bred stallions have shown greater power in controlling the action of their progeny than others that seemed to be equally well bred. If out of the great mass of stallions, past and present, that have been more or less successful as trotting progenitors, we pick out thirty of the very best, as shown by their progeny, it will probably surprise many of my readers to learn that only three of that number have been able to triumph in the supreme test of getting trotters out of running-bred mares. Of these three Electioneer stands first, Almont second, and Pilot Jr. third. After making all allowance for the anxiety of certain Californians and certain Kentuckians to prove the need of “more running blood in the trotter,” and their manifest willingness to help along with pedigrees in that direction, I am fully convinced that these three horses, in some cases, were able to meet and overcome the hostile elements of the galloper. Not in every case, certainly, nor in a majority of cases. When Senator Stanford was showing me the step of Palo Alto, on his own track, as a three-year-old, I remarked, “Well, Electioneer certainly triumphed in that case,” and the Senator replied, “Yes, but none of my other stallions can do it, and there are some thoroughbred mares upon which Electioneer can’t do it.” When approached by others on this subject in the riper years of his experience, he was in the habit of replying: “There are thoroughbreds and thoroughbreds; some of them will produce trotters to Electioneer, and some will not.” He accepted everything as thoroughbred that had been bought by his agents as thoroughbred, whether in Kentucky or California, and he claimed to be able to pick out those that would produce trotters by their appearance. When pressed to give the characteristics by which he was able to make his selections, he spoke of the shape of the animal, in a general way, and especially by the head and the expression of countenance. In selecting his mares to put in the trotting stud by their “appearance” he would naturally select such as had the “appearance” of trotters, and as he personally knew no more about their pedigrees or the inheritance of the animals than the mares knew themselves, he was very liable to be deceived in the breeding of the animals as he selected them. In selecting a mare by “appearance” as indicating that she might throw trotters to Electioneer, there is a strong suggestion that this “appearance” may have been a legitimate “inheritance” sought to be covered up by that sadly abused term “thoroughbred.” Whether this suggestion ever entered the Senator’s mind I have no means of determining. But whether some of the mares called “thoroughbred” had really a mixed inheritance or not, the fact remains that the three horses named above did succeed in getting some trotters from mares that were strongly running bred. Then the question arises: Why did these three horses succeed where all others failed? We are not able to give an answer to this question that is complete and irrefutable, for there is so much in the laws of generation that we do not and cannot know. Take two brothers, for example, and one is a great success and the other a great failure, and often the failure is the better formed and the better looking horse of the two. All that science teaches us here is that one took after some ancestor, near or remote, that was good, and the other after some ancestor that was not good. Electioneer, Almont and Pilot Jr. all had short pedigrees composed exclusively of trotting and pacing blood, except possibly a few drops of running blood that may have trickled down from the runner through trotting or pacing channels. Their instincts to stick to the trot had been encouraged and more or less completely developed. Electioneer and Almont both had pacing blood some distance away, and Pilot Jr., so far as we know, had nothing but pacing blood, and yet he never paced a step in his life. This embraces all we know of the three horses that proved themselves the most prepotent in overcoming all antagonisms of race or blood. Others equally great, no doubt, have come up since their day, but as breeding is now better understood and as the laws of nature are now more carefully followed, tests of this kind are not often made.

After all the “wiring in and wiring out” of the tortuous advocates of “more running blood in the trotter” had found that their efforts had borne no fruit and that all intelligent breeders had left their theories away behind, a remarkably brilliant genius struck out a new line of thought and argument, which unfortunately died “a bornin’” just as the attention of all intelligent breeders was turning away from “more running blood in the trotter” as a senseless “fad,” and looking to the pacer as a possible source of increased trotting speed. In formulating and exploiting his idea, our genius seems to have reasoned after this manner: “The crisis is here, the breeders are all turning away from the thoroughbred as a source of trotting speed and considering the pacer, and now if I can convince them that the pacer is at least half-thoroughbred I will beat the standard and win the day.” Here we have the motive and the subject, and now we are ready for the manipulation. In due time the article appeared, and I must do the writer the justice of saying I never have been fully satisfied that he believed a single word of it himself. He starts out to show that the pace is not the result of hereditary transmission but the result of “structural incongruity.” He declared that this “structural incongruity” is the result of breeding the thoroughbred horse on the slab-sided, ill-shapen mares of the West and Southwest. From the inheritance, part of the animal is structurally formed to run and the other part structurally formed to trot, and between the two a compromise is made on the pace. In this “structural incongruity,” between the two parts the pacing gait originated, and hence whatever speed the pacer may possess comes from the “thoroughbred;” and, therefore, of necessity, whatever speed the trotter gets from the pacer comes from the “thoroughbred.” There are many humbugs in the literature of the horse, but this is the craziest humbug I have ever met with. What a pity he left his work unfinished, and failed to tell us which end of the horse was running bred and which end trotting bred, so that we might locate the “incongruity” and cut it out! But to look at this “structural incongruity” seriously, it lacks but little of a scandal on the intelligence and honesty of American writers on the horse. Here is a gentleman of reputed intelligence, who wields a facile pen and has been writing on breeding subjects for about thirty years, and much of his work was well done; and now at the close of the nineteenth century he undertakes to tell us how the pacer originated in this country. The veriest tyro in horse history knows that pacers abounded in England in the twelfth century, and indeed long before that. Every colony in this country was full of pacers a hundred years before the first thoroughbred crossed the Atlantic. But wild and absurd theories can safely be left to the public judgment.

It required several years of labor and iteration to convince the breeding public that the trot and the pace were simply two forms of one and the same gait. When first advanced it was received by the more intelligent breeders as an abstraction that had nothing practical in it, while those of less ability to think for themselves only laughed at it. Since then the inevitable processes of experience have demonstrated its truth, and the question of today is how to separate these two forms of the same gait and to breed either form, as we may desire, as a distinct and certainly transmissible gait. With a few it will still remain a matter of indifference whether the colt comes a pacer or a trotter, but with the great mass of breeders the question of profit in breeding the harness horse must be considered. Everybody knows that in the market for road horses the clean-stepping trotter is worth more than the smooth-gliding pacer. This is not a question to be determined by fashion, but a fact of universal experience that the trotting action is better suited to harness and the pacing action better suited to the saddle. Fashions may change, but these two facts are unchangeable, for they are founded in the nature and mechanism of the two forms of action. The difficulties in the way of separating the diagonal from the lateral form of the trot are very great, and there is no use or wisdom in attempting to blink this fact. Speed at both forms of the gait comes from the same source, the same blood, the same inheritance; and source, blood and inheritance, in a breeding sense, are the hardest things in nature to overcome. So far as experience teaches there is but one method or treatment that has ever been successful in wiping out the pacer. In the first half of the seventeenth century England was full of pacers, and about a hundred years later she did not have one. The trouble about this remedy is that the trotters were wiped out also, and today England has neither a pacer nor a trotter. When she now wants a trotter she has to send to this country and get some of the blood of the little despised pacer that was shipped from her own shores in the early colonial days. The blood of the Saracenic horse has not lost its potency as a pacing expunger, as shown by modern experiments, and all our breeders have to do is to use it in copious effusions, and we will soon be rid of the pacer, and the trotter along with him. The pacer and the trotter are never found separate from each other, so far as my information goes. In Russia they breed trotters methodically, and they have a full supply of very fast pacers that are used as shaft horses in their droskies. As in the past, so in the future, we never need expect to see the two forms of the gait entirely separated.

Our people, however, are not ready, and as long as the horse is used for business and pleasure never will be ready to dispense with the trotter; and even though some considerable number might deplore the presence and prominence of the pacer, every one of them would welcome him with great joy if they knew he was a necessary adjunct of the trotter. When we consider the problem of reducing the ratio of pacers and increasing the ratio of trotters in what we produce, there is so much that is old and still imperfectly known in what we incorrectly call our “earlier” period of trotting that we find nothing encouraging in the study. The origin of the principal trotters of the early part of this century, except the direct descendants of Messenger, was so sedulously concealed that it was entirely natural for so many men to conclude that the trotter was not bred, but made by the trainer. When Flora Temple was the queen nobody knew that her speed came from a pacer. Old Kentucky Hunter was a very fast pacer. When Pelham was king nobody knew he had been a pacer. When Highland Maid eclipsed all records nobody knew she was pacing bred and had been a pacer herself. When Vermont Black Hawk was the most popular sire of his day nobody knew that his dam was “Old Narragansett,” a pacer. When Ethan Allen stood at the head of all young trotters the old grey mare, his dam, was, and still remains, entirely unknown, but everybody believes that a large share of his speed came from that mare. Andrew Jackson, the head of the great Clay family, was out of a fast pacing mare. And thus we might extend the list indefinitely. But away back, more than a hundred years before the period of which we are here speaking, pacing and trotting races had become so numerous that they had to be suppressed by legislative enactment. More than two hundred years ago there were pacing races and trotting races in this country, and then as now it seems evident that the form of the action of the prospective colt, whether lateral or diagonal, was uncertain until it appeared. This condition of uncertainty about the secrets of the womb has existed for centuries, as it exists today; and if we were furnished a complete list of all the great trotters of the last two decades that were born pacers we would hardly be willing to believe our own senses. The following short list of such animals as have gone fast at both forms of the gait will serve to illustrate the oneness of the two forms:

PACING. TROTTING. Jay-Eye-See, bl. g. by Dictator 2:06¼ 2:10 Direct, bl. h. by Director 2:05¼ 2:18¼ Monbars, b. h. by Eagle Bird 2:16¾ 2:11¾ George St. Clair, b. h. by Betterton 2:10¼ 2:15¼ Heir-at-Law, bl. h. by Mambrino King 2:07½ 2:12 Ottinger, br. g. by Dorsey’s Nephew 2:11½ 2:09¾ Bert Oliver, b. h. by Ashland Wilkes 2:08¾ 2:19¼ Vassar, gr. h. by Vatican 2:07 2:21¾ Pilgrim, br. h. by Acolyte 2:10½ 2:20¾ San Pedro, bl. g. by Del Sur 2:10¾ 2:14½ Wardwell, b. g. by Almont Jr. 2:16¼ 2:14¼ Gazette, b. h. by Onward 2:09¾ 2:23¾ Welcome, b. h. by Arthur Wilkes 2:10½ 2:27¼ Story’s Clay, b. b. by Everett Clay 2:14¾ 2:18¼ Captain Crouch, ch. h. by General Smith 2:13 2:25 Red Bud, ch. h. by Redfern 2:12½ 2:14½ Cleveland S., b. h. by Montgomery 2:10 2:24 Connor, bl. h. by C. F. Clay 2:14 2:13¼ Babette, b. m. by Sir John 2:12¼ 2:22¼

This exhibit might be further extended, but the foregoing will suffice for the purpose intended. The only remark that seems needed by way of explanation is that all the animals named, except two (San Pedro and Wardwell), made their records first as trotters.

In surveying the whole situation there is but little encouragement in attempting to solve the problem of how to reduce the ratio of the pacers and at the same time avoid the reduction of the speed of the trotters. The central point in the problem is the development of speed; and so long as the pacer comes to his speed so much quicker and easier than the trotter, and so long as the best pacer is a little faster, as he has always been, than the best trotter, there is no probability that his speed will not be developed. All efforts at repression or exclusion of the pacer from contesting for prizes at public meetings would be futile and, in a sense, unjust. Moreover, this would not be in the province of the breeder and he must work out his plans within the boundaries of his own domain. The laws of heredity apply to either of the two forms of the trot—the lateral and the diagonal—just as certainly as they apply to the two forms united. This is the breeder’s opportunity, and if he grasps it he will make progress slowly but surely. In his breeding selections he must lay it down as an inviolable rule that all pacers, especially pacers with their speed developed, must be excluded, no difference how strongly they may be bred in the best trotting lines. If a horse produces some fillies that, like Maud S., Sunol and hundreds of others, are halfway, or more than halfway, inclined to pace, he must rigorously keep them at the trot and nothing but the trot, unless he sells them. He must study intelligently the pedigrees and produce of the generations away back, and make such selections as are most likely to promote his object and least likely to violate the rule laid down. Of all the varieties of the horse on the face of the globe the American trotter is the typical harness horse. Our civilization no longer requires the saddle to climb through mountain passes, and to follow seldom-trodden paths through the wilderness. For either business or pleasure we travel on wheels, and we want the bold, bounding trotter to propel us. The pacer is the early and only saddle horse in the world, but he is not a harness horse. Aside from the few that will be used as gambling machines, his value will recede while that of the trotter will always advance. In the hands of a man of intelligent and fixed purpose it is certainly possible to breed a family of trotters in which the appearance of a pacer from birth would be of rare occurrence, and the longer such careful selections and purposes are continued the more rare will be the recurrence of the lateral habit of action.

That the development of the speed of the parents was very important, if not necessary to the increased speed of the progeny, was a proposition that was long disputed. Generally, as on other questions, each man argued it from the standpoint of his own stable, but not a few men of clear minds took that side of the question without regard to the potency of the law of heredity. In the early stages of the discussion of this question it was a difficult one to handle effectively. At that time very few sires, and still a less proportion of dams, had ever been regularly developed as trotters, hence the field for generalization was narrow and many of the instances quoted were disputed. For a time the battle raged quite fiercely around Hambletonian, as he was the most prominent stallion of that period, and if a man was trying to build up another family he would rave till he got black in the face against “Bill Rysdyk’s bull.” It is but just to say that the man who led in all this froth and fury against Hambletonian was engaged in breeding what he called “Clay Arabs,” and after dodging his creditors for a number of years his last hoof was sold from him by the sheriff. On the other hand, Hambletonian made his master a rich man, and he left a large estate. Hambletonian was only partially developed, but sufficient to show he was a fast colt for his period. (For full particulars see his history in another chapter.) Abdallah was a very great sire of speed and he was not a developed trotter, but his dam, old Amazonia, was quite fully developed. She won many races and was the fastest trotter of her day. Whether her speed came from a fast pacing ancestry, or whether it came from the reputed “son of Messenger,” as stated when she was bought near Philadelphia, never can be determined. The “son of Messenger” story seemed to be straight, but her form was coarse and plain, and her legs were so hairy that many who knew her best condemned the story; hence, all we can say about her is simply that she was a fast developed trotter. Andrew Jackson had but little trotting inheritance from his sire, and his dam was a fast pacing mare of unknown breeding, but his speed was very fully developed as a trotter, and he became the progenitor of the Clay and the Long Island Black Hawk families, that became famous in trotting history. While this reasoning was true in experience and sound under the canons of science, it was not strong and convincing, for the one and only reason that the basis of the generalization was too narrow and lacked in a sufficient number of cases to convince the understanding of the skeptical. We have had to wait for the accumulation of the experiences of a number of years, and now we have the evidence that is so complete as to be really startling and which no man can gainsay. The following little table embraces all the breeding farms in this country that have produced three or more trotters with records of 2:15 or better, and here the rate of speed is certainly high enough and the foundation is certainly broad enough to furnish just and safe conclusions:

Leland Stanford 18 Fashion Stud Farm 13 William Corbitt 9 Wm. H. Wilson 8 C. J. Hamlin 7 Glenview Farm 6 Timothy Anglin 5 Henry C. Jewett 4 Wm. C. France 4 Woodburn Farm 4 Robert G. Stoner 4 R. S. Veech 3 C. W. Williams 3 Highland Farm (Lee, Mass.) 3 Fairlawn Farm 3 E. W. Ayers 3 Charles Backman 3 George H. Ely 3 Mrs. S. L. Stout 3 Monroe Salisbury 3

Quite a number of other breeders have produced one or two that have made records in 2:15 or better, but I think the above list embraces all that have bred three or more with trotting records of 2:15 or better. The table will be a surprise to everybody, but I doubt whether it will be a greater surprise to anybody than it is to myself. At the head of the list stands the late Senator Stanford’s great establishment with eighteen to its credit, but this is not a fair basis of comparison with any other establishment in the whole country, for he had about three hundred mares in the trotting department of his breeding stud—about six times as large as the average of the larger studs of the country. The average number of horses in training, the year round, was about eighty, exclusive of yearlings and the kindergarten. In attempting to institute a comparison, therefore, with the average breeders of the country, we might as well compare the daily receipts of John Wanamaker’s store with those of the little green-grocer on the corner. But at the head of this establishment stood the great Electioneer with his strong breeding and trotting speed well developed, and indeed, in many respects the greatest horse of his generation. He was the sire of eleven in the list, and the remainder were either by his sons or out of his daughters.

Mr. Henry N. Smith, of New York, a prominent Wall Street man, became greatly interested in trotting sport, and in 1868 he organized a trotting stable of his own, which contained some remarkable animals, as will be seen below. His stable was very successful, and this success naturally increased his attachment to the trotting interests. He then determined to establish a breeding farm, and about the year 1869 he purchased the famous old Fashion Course adjoining Trenton, New Jersey, embracing one hundred and forty-five acres of land and provided with an excellent mile track and much stabling that had been constructed years before for running horses. This property he very appropriately named the “Fashion Stud Farm,” and on it he placed the grandest assemblage of developed trotters, for breeding purposes only, that had ever been brought together in this or any other country. His stallions were Jay Gould, 2:20½, Tattler, 2:26, and Gen. Knox, 2:31½. This was Knox’s fastest record, but it was known he had trotted miles, in races, faster than this. The speed of all three horses was developed, and it is evident at a glance that there was only one first-class horse among them. But the great strength of the establishment was in the grand galaxy of mares, some of which I will enumerate, namely. Goldsmith Maid, 2:14, Lady Thorn, 2:18¼, Lucy, 2:18¼, Lady Maud, 2:18¼, Rosalind, 2:21¾, Belle Strickland, 2:26, Western Girl, 2:27, Idol, 2:27, Big Mary, 2:28½, Daisy Burns, 2:28, Music’s Dam (that had produced 2:21½ speed), besides others with slower records or known to have had their speed developed as fast road mares, making in all about thirty mares on the farm, and Mr. Smith claimed that every one of them had shown more or less speed as trotters.

Mr. Smith neither knew nor cared much about pedigrees, in a general sense, and when you came to talk to him about “nicks” and “trotting pitch” and all that kind of tomfoolery, his mind simply recurred to the old adage uttered generations ago: “Trot father, trot mother, trot colt.” His whole philosophy was wrapped up in the one central truth that the horse that could go out and trot fast, when bred on the mare that could go out and trot fast, would produce a colt that would go out and trot fast. This was sufficient for him or indeed for anybody else, for it contains and expresses the whole substance of the laws of heredity. Mr. Smith’s great mares acquired in their training and development new characters and new capacities which they never would have possessed had it not been for the care and skill expended in their training. Here we touch the very marrow of a question around which the scientists of today are warring. Darwin taught that such acquisitions were transmissible, of the truth of which I have no doubt, but a post-Darwinian school has arisen which controverts this position, and claims that it weakens and destroys the whole evolution theory of creation. But it matters not about the hypothesis of evolution concerning things we know, for it is simply an attempt to show how all things might have been created without a Creator. I have read a great deal about evolution and the transmissibility of acquired characters, but in all I have read I never have met with a lesson so broad and so strong as that furnished by Henry N. Smith’s great mares, proving that acquired characters are transmitted.

In instituting a comparison between the high-class products of the Palo Alto and the Fashion Stud Farms, it seems to be necessary to place the premier stallions of the two side and side. They were half-brothers on the side of the sire, but Electioneer had the greatest speed-producing dam of her generation. She was a fast natural trotter herself, and was out of a fast and fully developed trotter. Jay Gould was out of a good road mare by American Star, but nobody has ever said she had any speed, and she was out of a nondescript mare that we know nothing about. Gould’s dam never produced any other trotter with a reputable rate of speed, so far as I have been able to learn. Electioneer was trained and developed by Mr. Backman, but he never was in a race, and consequently he has no official record. After he was taken to Palo Alto he was given quite regular work, and it is beyond all doubt that when in stud condition he could show a quarter in a little better than a 2:20 gait. The difference in the rate of speed, therefore, as between the two horses was not very great, but whatever it was must go to the credit of Jay Gould. But the offspring of Electioneer had a very great advantage over those of Jay Gould in the methodical and skillful development of their speed. In his maternal inheritance as a trotter, as already indicated, Electioneer had a marked superiority, and on an equally high class of developed mares he would have far outstripped his rival. Now, with this attempt at a clean-cut description of the two horses, we are ready to consider the question in its arithmetical elements, and it will be found a plain question of “simple proportion” which anybody can solve in a minute, as follows: “If the Fashion Stud Farm from thirty mares produced thirteen trotters with public records of 2:15 or better, how many of equal capacity should the Palo Alto Farm have produced from three hundred mares?” The answer is one hundred and thirty, but the facts, up to the close of 1896, furnish us with the beggarly number of eighteen.

The grand assemblage of so many great trotters at the Fashion Stud Farm, and all for the purpose of breeding, was the subject of much comment among breeders from one end of the land to the other, and not a few pronounced it all wrong and that it would be succeeded by failure. Mr. Smith lacked some of the elements that go toward making a man popular, and hence, in many cases, there was not much sympathy between him and his brother breeders, but he held tenaciously to the central truth that the way to breed high-class trotters was to mate high-class trotters. His experience has clearly demonstrated the soundness of this canon of breeding, and it has just as clearly demonstrated the unsoundness of the notion that high-class trotters can be bred from animals that never trotted and never could be made to trot. The law, as we have taught it for years, has been vindicated, and that by experiences so wide and so complete that it can no longer be controverted. Mr. Smith has achieved a great honor, and as a producer of high-class speed he stands at the head of all American trotting-horse breeders.

As we have now considered a great triumph, with the causes that led up to it and the lesson it has taught, it seems to be in order to give an example of a great failure and the causes which have produced it. For more than forty years Woodburn Farm, in Kentucky, has been breeding trotters, and up to the close of 1896 just four with records of 2:15 or better have hailed from that great establishment. During all these years, and until Palo Alto Farm was established, Woodburn was the largest establishment in this country. With thousands of broad acres of the most productive soil, with the possession and control of money without limit, and with the experiences of forty years in which to select and breed only to the best, it is the natural and reasonable expectation of everybody interested in the question of breeding the trotter to look to Woodburn as leading all other establishments in the whole world in the production of first-class trotters. And what has Woodburn done? With her experiences of forty years, with all her broad acres and boundless wealth, up to the close of 1896 she has produced just four trotters with records of 2:15 or better. Instead of leading all others, she is at the wrong end of the procession, and if we consider the proportional advantages involved, we find that “all others,” little and big, are leading her. By referring to the above list of breeders that have produced three or more with records of 2:15 or better, we find that Henry N. Smith has produced thirteen, that William Corbett, from his little stud in California, has produced nine, and that the late William H. Wilson, of Cynthiana, Kentucky, from his little band of mares, and without either broad acres or money, has produced eight within the past twelve or fifteen years, and all except one by the same horse. This places Mr. Wilson first among all Kentucky breeders. In the short period of its existence Glenview Farm produced six, and the quite unpretentious farmer, Mr. Timothy Anglin, produced five; W. C. France and Colonel R. G. Stoner produced four each—the same number as Woodburn—but they did not require forty years to accomplish it. Thus the breeding world, with “the little fellows” on top, has gone away ahead and left Woodburn to mumble over her “tin cups,” and exult in the many triumphs she has won against the watch in 2:30. The policy of Woodburn for years past seems to have been to hold the lead of Kentucky breeders in the production of 2:30 trotters, and to this end the youngsters are put in training in the early spring and kept at it till the frosts come, when such of them as are sure to win are brought out and started against the watch, for a “tin cup,” and these are the victories that Woodburn wins. Nobody has ever heard of Woodburn entering a youngster in a stake where he would have to win on his merits. That would be bringing him down to an equality with the colts of such people as William H. Wilson, Colonel R. G. Stoner, Farmer Timothy Anglin, and all the other “little fellows.” Woodburn has made a great deal of money out of these humbug tin-cup records, and as registration and the standard are now absolutely under the control of her manager, the 2:30-tin-cup still remains the evidence of a fast trotter, worthy of standard rank. True, everybody nowadays laughs at the idea that 2:30, with the “tin cup,” is any evidence of even reputable speed, but as they have given a certain kind of pre-eminence and made money in the past, the twins will not be separated, but will hold their places just as long as the standard is under the present control.

From this brief examination of the symptoms I think a safe diagnosis can be made. The trouble seems to be twofold, or it may be said there are two troubles, either one of which is dangerous, but the two together may prove fatal in the end. It is a well-known fact in veterinary science that there are certain diseases among horses that may be communicated to the men who have them in charge. There is one disease, vulgarly called “big-head,” that comes creeping upon its victim before he is aware of its existence or approach, and against the insidious steps of this destroyer the manager at Woodburn should be affectionately warned. Sham records of 2:30 for standard rank are no longer welcomed with enthusiasm in this country. The other trouble is not so much with the manager as with the material which he manages, which seems to be affected with what may be called “dry-rot.” This view of the non-productive character of the Woodburn breeding stock, when measured by first-class performers, seems to be borne out by the fact that the names of those gentlemen who have depended most largely on Woodburn blood do not appear on the foregoing list as the producers of first-class trotters. For about forty years the fame of Woodburn as the greatest of all our breeding establishments has been as wide as the boundaries of the nation. But notwithstanding the weight and influence which great wealth and an unblemished name may have secured, the records up to the close of the year 1896 have deposed her from the first rank as a breeder of trotting horses, and sent her away to the rear, where she now occupies her true place in the eighth rank. It is well known to everybody that, since the days of the first Mr. Alexander, Woodburn has never entered a colt in a stake nor started one against other people’s colts, prize or no prize. This air of assumed superiority is sought to be explained on high moral grounds against the evils of horse-racing. This is like the man who never tasted whisky for conscience’ sake, in view of the great evil it was doing in the world, and yet he was the chief owner in a large distillery. At the great local meetings in Kentucky practically all the breeding establishments of that region, except Woodburn, are represented in the stakes, and while they are being contested Woodburn will come in with a string of youngsters, between the heats, and win sham records in 2:30 for “tin cups.” Depending on this kind of test and this kind of development, it is not remarkable that all the small breeders of the State have left Woodburn in the rear. This shining example of failure teaches unmistakably the necessity of honest and full development of breeding stock in order to produce high-class trotters.