BREEDING FOR TROTTERS. 81 



ity for some especial family; while the occasional breeder, 

 bewildered by the jargon of disputing horsemen, commonly 

 goes it blind, taking his chance for a Goldsmith Maid or a 

 Rarus by breeding his usually worn-out, unsound mare to a 

 horse of a track-record, or often to a horse whose boasted 

 excellence is in his relation to a horse that had such a 

 record. 



Stock horses that have, among hundreds of unknown or 

 forgotten failures, registered some accidental trotters, have 

 had no lack of patronage, and, in some well-known cases, 

 have commanded enormous fees for their services ; greater, in 

 the aggregate amount, than the whole value of their progeny. 



But the trotting-business is a complicated one. It does 

 not end with the growth of the foal to common maturity : 

 that is but the beginning of sorrow and responsibility. This 

 trotting-instinct, unlike other horse qualities, is latent. The 

 horse that can trot fast don't know it : he has to be devel- 

 oped by a peculiar course of instruction. He is like a deaf 

 man, who is also mute because he has no comprehension of 

 speech ; and his unused faculties have to be awakened in the 

 brain, and the organs practised, until he learns lip-reading 

 and speech. So the colt has to be " developed," — " handled 

 for speed." Then begins the real expense of his rearing. 

 One season of a young horse in the hands of a "profes- 

 sional," with the cost of sulkies, blankets, boots, toe-wrights, 

 constant changes of shoeing, &c., will take the cost of a trot- 

 ter far beyond any thing that he will realize as a mere horse. 



It is the rule of these ventures, that the colt is a failure, 

 and that, tried too young, he is over-worked in training, and 

 comes back to his owner with puffed legs, stiffened joints, 

 contracted feet, and, it may be, with incorrigible vices. But 

 if he prove the exception to the rule, and develop speed 

 and stanchness, it is then incumbent upon his owner to 

 take him to the track, enter him skilfully where the most 

 can be made of him by getting or avoiding record ; and the 

 profit must be had from the games of the track, or by selling 

 the horse for a price that indicates at once that he is to be 

 used for gambling-purposes. It is calculated by observing 

 horsemen, that when the best sires and dam are selected, and 

 the produce bred with the greatest care, the chance of pro- 

 ducing a record trotter is about one in a hundred ; but, when 

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