ORIGIN OF AMERICAN TROTTING HORSES 137 



in their veins, some of them having two or three crosses, it 

 nearly always came through sires ; and the produce of a 

 thoroughbred mare by a trotting stallion seldom trained on 

 after two or three years old, although it might display great 

 speed at first. Blue blood, however, was a necessity in the 

 family tree — for that alone has the capacity for imparting 

 a high state of nervous vigour and action to the produce 

 of a low-born animal. Many of the dams of the old-time 

 champions were great road mares, capable of doing very 

 fast performances in the course of their ordinary work, and 

 when these came to be mated with a thoroughbred horse, 

 which had the gift of getting animals which took naturally 

 to trotting, the produce frequently became a star in the 

 trotting world. As breeding progressed, however, thorough- 

 bred mares came to play a great part as dams and gran- 

 dams of famous horses. 



When there was a sufficiency of blood in an animal 

 to enable him to continue to travel at a very high rate 

 of speed, he was well-bred enough to mate with mares that 

 also possessed some " blood." This was very early shown 

 by the success of the famous Bellfounder, who had a great 

 deal of the best racing blood in his composition. His sire. 

 Old Bellfounder, was a descendant of the Fireaways, 

 who descended in tail male from Flying Childers. His dam 

 Velocity was by Haphazard, a grandson of Eclipse, and 

 must have had other good strains, since it is recorded of her 

 that she trotted sixteen miles in one hour on the Norwich road 

 in 1806, and won her match — which she had done her best 

 to lose, since she broke into a gallop fifteen times, and 

 had as often to be turned round in consequence. When the 

 daughter of Bellfounder was mated with Abdallah, who was 

 so closely inbred to Messenger, the produce was the mighty 

 sire Hambletonian, whose descendants enrolled in the 

 coveted 2.30 register may now be said to be legions. As Mr. 

 Hamilton Busbey remarks in " The Trotting and the 

 Pacing Horse in America " : "It was not so much the 

 speed of his sons and daughters as their ability to transmit 

 speed which placed Hambletonian on the summit of the 

 mountam." 



