456 THE HORSE AMERICAN TROTTERS 



time (giving origin to the name " side-wheeler "), in place of 

 the fore and the hind foot on opposite sides as in trotting, 

 is a natural movement which may appear in the progeny of 

 a noted trotting family in the same way that a famous pacing 

 sire or dam may produce a horse which assumes the trotting 

 rather than the pacing gait. " Probably three-quarters of 

 the pacers are trotting bred." 



The pacing standard is the same as the trotting standard 

 detailed above, but pacing horses are entered in a separate 

 section of the " Record." Pacing is kindred to and inter- 

 mediate between trotting and galloping. The best pacing 

 records are on the whole slightly in advance of the corre- 

 sponding trotting records, probably because a pacer gets his 

 four feet more nearly in a straight line than a trotter. The 

 pacing movement is increasing in public favour with the 

 great increase of pacing stock. 



Important lessons to British breeders are to be learned 

 by studying the early history of the American trotter, which 

 in a word may be said to be descended from the best " clean- 

 bred" English "running" or "race-horse" the so-called 

 " Thoroughbred," with a happy combination of other blood 

 notably of the old English Trotting horse, the ancestor of 

 the Hackney of the present day. We have the authority of 

 John H. Wallace 1 that two English Thoroughbreds, "Mes- 

 senger" and "Shark," exported in 1786; laid the foundation of 

 the best blood stock in America. Macleod says : " The foreign 

 horse that played the most important part in originating the 

 American trotting breed, and that which conspicuously 

 figures in the ancestry of our greatest sires and performers, 

 was 'Imported Messenger.' 'Messenger' was a grey 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 

 1 Matchem,' son of * Cade,' by the ' Godolphin Arabian.' " 



It is believed that " Messenger" was not a pure Thorough- 

 bred, because his grandsire, " Engineer," sire of " Mambrino," 



1 In The Horse of America (1897), pp. 222-31 and 303, q.v. 



