English Setters 139 



involves the acquirement and inheritance of 

 energy. 



In the pedigrees of horses it was found that 

 the sires in the best pedigrees appeared at 

 greater and greater average ages as we went 

 back, generation after generation, from the 

 2 : 10 trotters. This is the result of a post- 

 mortem selection coming from finding that 

 the progeny from the offspring of young sires 

 is inferior to the progeny coming from the 

 offspring of old sires. To make it possible 

 to thus eliminate the offspring of young sires 

 there must be a sufficient supply of such off- 

 spring so that those remaining after the elimi- 

 nation can furnish all the horses needed in 

 the country. Horses have been bred in 

 America from the earliest colonial days, and 

 at the beginning of the nineteenth century 

 there were thousands of trotters scattered 

 through all parts of the country. In 1907 it 

 was found that of the 22,238 horses which 

 had trotted a mile in 2 : 30 or less, all traced 

 in tail-male to one or another of seventeen 

 foundation horses which lived in the early 



