224 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



Some writers, like the old Duke of Newcastle, prefer a natural trotter 

 to a pacer, but merely because "A Trot is the foundation of a Gal- 

 lop;" while "An Amble being a Shuffling Action, I would have it 

 Banish't the Mennage" (A New Method, etc., p. 153, London, 1 667); 

 but nearly all the old writers dismissed the trot with a few words, 

 but devoted much to the amble. In fact, the trot is usually spoken 

 of with positive contempt. In an old French ballad, " Le lai du 

 Trot,'''' it is said that those ladies who are kind to their husbands in 

 this world, in the next may ride on beautiful ambling palfreys, but 

 those women who are wicked in this world, in the next will have 

 to ride trotting nags. This but illustrates the esteem in which the 

 trotter was held. 



I will not here discuss the nature of the various gaits of the 

 horse, further than to say that in the middle ages, and doubtless 

 much earlier, in addition to those assumed by horses naturally, 

 there were many artificial gaits taught. There is an enormous 

 literature relating to this. But the fashion has all passed away. 

 As ambling was then so much more valuable than trotting, it was 

 bred to, and there is abundant evidence that natural pacers were 

 common, but when not natural the gait was taught. 



As the canter, gallop, run, and amble were the gaits for the 

 saddle, so the trot is the gait for the carriage, and consequently the 

 history of the trotter is also related to that of carriages. 



Chariots and wheeled vehicles of some kind have been used to 

 some extent from the day of the Pharaohs, but in the form and 

 shape in which we know them, they are rather modern. Coaches 

 came into use in England in the time of Queen Elizabeth (there had 

 been whirlicotes and various vehicles in slight use, from time to 

 time, earlier than that), but, until long after, most traveling was 

 on horseback. The roads, compared with those of to-day, were 

 bad, and coaches were heavy. When King George II died in 

 1760, the Lord Chamberlain, the Duke of Devonshire, arrived in 

 town in three days, having traveled at the "prodigious rate of 

 fifty miles a day," the historian tells us. What need for a fast 

 roadster then, or for any time previous from the dawn of history ? 

 No, the fast trotter would have found no place then: if he had 

 existed he would probably have been neglected and become extinct. 



Four-wheeled vehicles are now so numerous and universally 

 used that we are apt to forget how very modern their common use 

 is. The first stage route between New York and Boston was not 



