FINEST RACE EVER KNOWN. 85 



Morgan, Abdallah, American Star, and Mambrino Chief, are 

 examples of this grade ; though, in such cases, there should 

 be blood on the side of the dams, or re-enforcement of blood 

 in the next generation. In selecting a thoroughbred, I would 

 choose no weedy horse, because he had run fast miles, or 

 lowered the record at short distances. He should have the 

 beauty of his race, and show his kingly lineage in his bearing 

 and expression. He should be fifteen and three-fourths or 

 sixteen hands high, without having long legs. He should 

 have strong mental qualities; for a horse, like a man, cannot 

 be merely an animal. He must be intelligent, brave, patient, 

 and generous. He must have a pedigree in which every an- 

 cestor is known to have been of approved excellence, and 

 with record showing that they have been willing to die to 

 carry their owners' colors to the front, and that, in the test of 

 the four-mile race, they have swerved not from the cold steel, 

 nor the sharp switch of whalebone, but run straight and true, 

 as old man Harper used to say, from " eend to eend." 



Let the men who are so swift to disparage those they con- 

 temptuously mention as " runners " not forget that the finest 

 race of horses ever known in New England came from the 

 thorousrh blood that flowed in the veins of both sire and dam 

 of Justin Morgan ; that both Hambletonian and Mambrino 

 Chief, representatives of the two great rival families of trot- 

 ters, are but four removes from powerful race-horses. And 

 while both of these sires have made abundant failures with 

 mares of cold blood, they have made great successes with 

 mares strong in racing blood; Hambletonian sharing his 

 fame as a sire almost entirely with the daughters of Ameri- 

 can Star. And Mambrino Chief has had a wide range of 

 fine-bred mares; Lady Thorne, unquestionably the best track- 

 horse of her day, the only trotter Goldsmith Maid ever met 

 from whom she could never win a heat, being by Mambrino 

 Chief out of a dam almost quite thoroughbred. 



And now it is full time for me to come to the question of 

 what sort of mares shall we use. When I look at our New- 

 England stock, it is easier for me to say what should not be 

 used. It is generally claimed, by those who write and talk 

 the most about horse-breeding, that foals follow the sire, and 

 that the best mare is the one that impresses her offspring the 

 least with her own individuality. There is much argument 



