NINTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 95 
improvement of the better type of breeding domestic animals. Foreign 
countries that have been producing and furnishing us the breeds from 
which we have imported so largely have spent millions where we have 
spent cents in the improvement of their domestic animals; and as a 
result, they have fixed and definite types. This has come about very 
largely by the government aid that has been given to producing various 
types of domestic animals, and especially horses. It takes more time, 
more persistent effort, to establish a type or breed of horses than of most 
other domestic animals; and in consequence of that the foreign govern- 
ments that are giving most attention to the improvement of domestic 
animals have given more liberal aid to the improvement of horses than 
to the improvement of other domestic animals. 
Fortunately, we have in this country some of what are called native 
types of horses. During the latter part of the eighteenth century a horse 
called Imported Messenger was imported. He was a thoroughbred 
horse, but he early gave evidence of having a strong and a well-established 
tendency to trot. That horse is regarded as the foundation of the Amer- 
ican trotting breed. His progeny also gave evidence of this inclination 
to go fast at the trot. The trot is termed and considered an artificial 
rather than a natural gait; at least in the extreme speed. 
The year after Messenger was imported, 1789, Justin Morgan was 
foaled. Justin Morgan was the foundation of the Morgan type of breed 
of horses, and those two horses have been great factors in establishing 
types. From the one came the American trotting horse, and from the 
other the Morgan type. 
Then later we had Roy Wilkes' Hambletonian, in 1849. That horse 
gave evidence of this ability to go fast at the trot in a remarkable degree 
— much more so than any horse previous to this time; and Roy Wilkes' 
Hambletonian constitutes the real origin of the American trotting horse. 
From that time forward there has been a rapid development of the 
American trotting horse, until we have to-day the standard bred horse. 
It was developed primarily for speed, but there has been a constant inter- 
mingling of the blood of the standard-bred horse and the Morgan type or 
breed, and another type that developed about the middle of the last cen- 
tury, the saddle horse, from the Denmark blood. You will be surprised 
to-day, when you come to study the pedigrees of many of the leading 
horses, to find how these three lines of blood have been intermingled in 
many of the most prominent and most valuable horses that we have for 
various purposes. 
The saddle horse breeders held pretty firmly to a fixed type, and as a 
result we have the American or gaited saddle horse; and while they are 
trained to go what we call the saddle gait, they are also very successful 
in going what we call the English gaits or the walk, trot and canter. 
And when you come to study the origin and development of the American 
saddle horse, you will be astonished, as I have been in going to Ken- 
tucky and studying pedigrees of horses in the leading breeding establish- 
ments, to find what a strong infusion there is there of Morgan blood; and 
you will find it also in the strains that have given rise to our best carri- 
age hor«es. 
