The Heredity of Racing Stamina in the 

 Thoroughbred Horse. 



By J. B. ROBERTSON. 



Ix the literature of inheritance there is a trite obser- 

 vation that speed and stamina in the racehorse are 

 not separate characters, but the manifestation of a 

 combination of characters, involving bone, muscle, 

 internal organs, and a capacity for making acquire- 

 ments. This, however, reads rather like a loose 

 excuse for not coming to close quarters with hereditary 

 characters in the racehorse. A capacity for making 

 acquirements is a convenient phrase which can be 

 applied equally well to a senior wrangler or a bucking 

 broncho in a Wild West show. All the higher animals 

 have a capacity for making both mental and physical 

 acquirements ; but the capacity is subservient to the 

 hereditary morphology and physiology of the tissues. 

 The merest tyro can see that the bony skeleton of the 

 thoroughbred and his relatives, the Arab and Barb, 

 differs very materially from that of shires, Clydes- 

 dales, hackneys and so forth. Indeed, the crude 

 ungainly bones of the shire, which give one the im- 

 pression of a horse in the making, would be an im- 

 possible proposition in a racehorse. In certain racial 

 characters the bones of thoroughbreds are alike. 

 Nevertheless, individual differences are very great. 

 But in the passive skeleton these differences rarely 

 offer any explanation for the extremely wide diver- 



