i 
ey 
THE NATIONAL HORSE OF AMERIGA. ~ 695 
so the most unpretentious trotting blood of to-day is superior to 
what the direct blood of Messenger was, It is with writers on horse- 
breeding a very common but very erroneous thing to inculcate the 
idea that because some family of horses originated in a famous an- 
cestor he was necessarily superior to his descendants of the present 
day. They forget that in forming a breed we rise superior to as we 
go away from the beginning. A stream meandering from a mount- 
ain spring may be the source of a great river; but if we follow that 
stream we find it joined by tributary after tributary until the aggre- 
gated whole is a mighty volume compared with which the source is 
insignificant. So the speed-transmitting power of Messenger, if it 
could be now drawn upon directly, would be a weak and sluggish 
element in the swift and intense speed currents of to-day. Still, none 
the less did it play its part as an original source. 
Messenger wasa gray horse, foaled in 1780, bred by John Pratt, of 
New Market, England, and, according to the English Stud Book, was 
got by Mambrino out of a daughter of Turf. Mambrino was by 
Engineer, son of Sampson, by Blaze, by Childers (Flying Childers), | 
son of the Darley Arabian, a horse imported to England from the 
Levant in the reign of Queen Anne. Turf, the reputed sire of the 
dam of Messenger, was by Matchem, sen of Cade, by the Godolphin 
Arabian, ; 
Here two points present themselves for consideration, or perhaps 
we should say, speculation : 
First. Mr. J. H. Wallace, founder and compiler of the American 
Trotting Register, than whom no man has worked more indefatiga- 
bly in the interest of the American horse, than whom none has 
accomplished more, and than whom none is a better authority 
has quite clearly demonstrated that Messenger was not a strictly 
thoroughbred horse. Engineer, the sire of Mambrino, sire of Messen- 
ger, was not thoroughbred, and, under the technics of breeding, this 
of itself puts Messenger outside the pale of race-horses of untainted 
blood. Then the evidence that his dam was a daughter of Turf is 
wholly unsatisfactory, and in short, even if all stated in the Stud 
Book is admitted, still under no rule, English or American, could 
Messenger be ranked as thoroughbred. It may be said he was prac- 
tically thoroughbred; but when we refiect that he did that in found- 
ing a trotting breed which no thoroughbred horse ever did, we are 
almost irresistibly forced to the conclusion that in the streams of 
unknown and uncertain blood pouring into his inheritance some 
subtle influence was carried that favored the trotting gait. Indeed, 
this is not speculation, but certainty; for in Pick’s Turf Register we 
find this striking and positive statement concerning Mambrino, the 
sire of Messenger: ‘‘ Mambrino was likewise sire of a great many 
excellent hunters and strong, useful road horses. .And it has been 
said that from his blood the breed of horses for the coach was 
brought nearly to perfection.” 
Another point, speculative rather than certain: | have already 
given John Lawrence’s statement that Blank ‘‘may be looked upon 
as the father of (English) trotters, since from his son Shales have pro- 
ceeded the best and greatest number of horses of that qualification.” 
But in his history Lawrence admits that the statement that Shales 
was by Blank is merely tradition. In the introduction to Vol. I of 
the English Hackney Stud Book Henry F. Euren, a most candid 
and entertaining writer, pretty satisfactorily demonstrated that Shales 
was a son of Blaze, the sire of Sampson, that got Engineer, sire of 
