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712 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 
writer obey his will in tracing the letters of a word, so do the mus- 
cles of a horse controlling the use of his limbs obey his will. Hence 
speed of any certain order is primarily a mental quality—an instinct. 
The physical structure is the machine, the will the motive power, 
and each isa mutual necessity. The trotting horse that can trot the 
fastest and the farthest is the one that has the strongest trotting in- 
stinct combined with the most perfect physical organization. While 
without the physical ability the instinct will not enable the horse to __ 
perform, neither will the most perfect form and structure make a 
trotter without the instinct to trot. The idea, then, that an animal 
of a certain form, with no trotting inheritance, is desirable to breed 
‘from for trotting speed is clearly fallacious, and he who advances it 
must forget the supremacy of the mental over the physical organi- 
zation. 
Notwithstanding this, it is no less the duty of the hour to breed 
for high form and form. I think in the constant striving after 
speed alone the essentials of form, size, and finish are being griev- 
ously overlooked. They may perhaps be overlooked without ruinous 
consequences to the breeder of turf horses, but he who would breed for 
the more solid purposes of every-day use and to meet an every-day 
market can not overlook them and succeed. 
I have not set down these fundamental principles of breeding with 
the purpose of touching any but the great central truths with which 
no successful breeder can be unfamiliar. J havein this article merely 
sought to mark, by tracing his history and pointing his fitness for 
the every-day uses of the American people, the place the trotting- 
bred horse holds in the equine world, and the claims he has on the 
regard of the people of the nation. Iam convinced that the Ameri- 
can horse is the best type of the equine race, the most practical and 
the most valued. His importance to our commerce, the wide range 
of uses he serves so well, and his peculiar excellence and beauty in 
the places which no other type can fill are reasons sufficient that the 
American light-harness horse and the intelligent methods of his 
production should hold a foremost place in the business of the agri- 
cultural classes of the nation. 
