1106 New York State Breeders' Association 



that weighed over 1,000 pounds. If you must have heavier or 

 larger horses for your sires you can find them plentifully among 

 the trotters. It would not be at all diiUcult to place a trotting bred 

 stallion weighing from 1,200 to 1,500 pounds — too large to be a 

 practicable proposition for a racing career in every township in 

 the Empire State, at a price which would bring his services within 

 reach of the himiblest farmer. These horses need not necessarily 

 be fast or fashionably bred, or able to beget 2 :30 trotters ; they 

 need not be registerd or eligible to registration; they need not 

 have ancestors noted as great speed-getters and all that they need to 

 possess to be the best available asset in the equine line for a New 

 York farmer, is good feet, bone and conformation, sound legs, kind 

 dispositions and docility, the composite of which qualities is to be 

 found more uniformly in the American trotter, than in any other 

 breed of horses in the world. 



It would be a very serious misapprehension of the truth, if any 

 one should conceive the idea that I am advising New York farmers 

 to breed trotters for trotting purposes. Breeding for speed is a 

 specialty and none but the specialists should touch it — even many 

 of these have failed at it. I am simply maintaining that the trotter 

 possesses more of the qualities demanded in a farmer's horse than 

 any other type. There is not one of them that cannot trot faster, 

 as well as perform everything else in the whole range of himaan 

 necessity better than horses of any other breed. 



It is claimed that the trotter does not breed to a t^'^e, but it is 

 not true. There is not a single occupation or purpose that has 

 been striven for in his production which has not been realized. It 

 is true that he has been bred mainlv for fast trottina;, but he can 

 be just as readily a saddle horse, a showring horse, a farm horse, 

 or anything else. lie has the most facile intelligence and the most 

 plastic blood of any creature in the animal kingdom. His ver- 

 satility was never more strikingly manifested than in the New 

 York mounted police, which is easily the most splendidly mounted 

 body of men on this continent and perhaps in the world. The 

 ])eauty, uniformity of color, size, gait and conformation, and the 

 intelligence of tlicsc- horses are a perpetual marvel to every 

 beholder, and they are strictly trotting bred, almost without excep- 

 tion. Nobody can doubt that the trotter will breed to a type after 



