692 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE, 
affairs of the American people. He is not generally bred and 
used. Asto the ‘‘ Norfolk trotters” of England, the more that is 
learned of them the less certain can we be that it is at all correct to 
regard them as a breed of trotters. Should we array all that is 
known of these horses, we could only show that some of them had 
speed at the trot far superior to that of the ordinary English horse, 
and proving this we have not by any means proven that they were 
a trotting breed, but rather have established that they might have 
been suitable raw material from which, by selection and develop- 
ment through a series of generations, to evolve a trotting breed. As. 
to the .‘‘native trotters” of Europe and the ‘‘native trotters” of 
Australia, they must be regarded in discussing breeds as yet in too 
embryotic a state to be seriously considered. 
The facts, then, that the fast-trotting horse is distinctively an Amer- - 
ican production; that of all our breeds of horses the trotting horse is 
the only one that we can claim as peculiarly American; that he fills 
withthe American people arange of usesthatno other breed or variety 
can fill; and that he is bred in America to an extent unapproached 
by other breeds, are ample justification for the public acceptance— 
and for my definition—of the trotting-bred horse as the national horse 
of America. 
I will defer comment upon his excellence in special capacities until 
we have done with the historical division of our subject; but I wish 
here to explain that when I define and treat the trotting horse as the 
national horse I do so considering him not chiefly as a turf horse—a 
racing animal—but regarding him in his higher capacity as the special 
horse of the people. Still, in tracing his history, in estimating his 
capacities, and in weighing the relative merits of the different strains 
of blood that enter into this composite breed we must deal in a very 
great measure with his turf history. The horse best adapted to the 
uses of the American farmer and the average American citizen who 
uses horses at all is the one that, with other essentials, combines 
quick, far-reaching, well-balanced action with the endurance to sus- 
tain speed at high rates and long distances. These are, too, the 
qualities primarily required in a horse for racing purposes, and thus 
the blood best for the trotting turf is the best blood from which to 
breed the horse of the road, the park, and the boulevard—the horse 
for the lightest single driving equipage, for the family pheton, or 
for double harness. Qualities required for these eminently proper 
purposes are produced in the highest degree by the best trotting 
blood; we can only determine what the best trotting blood is, by 
the measure of turf tests and turf history; and though these qualities 
may be, and we know are, ofttimes shamefully perverted upon the 
track, they are none the less essential and none the less to be desired 
in the horse we are discussing. The fact that high and excellent 
capacities are perverted to ignoble uses renders them none the less 
to be admired, valued, and striven for. Further on 1 propose to 
say a word as to the benefits of proper racing. Here I only wish to 
impress upon the reader who may have no interest in the American 
trotter in a turf sense the fact that the value of the light-harness 
horse rests in a large degree upon the purity and quality of his blood, 
and that the worth of his blood can only be determined by what it 
has accomplished under the turf test. Hence the occasion for con- 
sidering turf history. ; 
To every one accustomed to horses the differences of the various 
gaits are familiar, but to fix them clearly in the mind isa first neces- 
