MESSENGER AND EARLY TROTTERS 101 



capacity to trot faster than was then at all usual. 

 Naturally, therefore, he was used to further this 

 end as much as to sire runners, though there was 

 nothing like a trotting turf in those days, the con- 

 tests being on the roads under saddle and for con- 

 siderable distances. 



Messenger's sire was Mambrino, by Engi- 

 neer; Engineer was by Sampson, and Sampson by 

 Blaze ; Blaze by Flying Childers (pronounced by 

 Major Upton in his " Newmarket and Arabia," 

 "the best horse to be found in the stud book"); 

 and Flying Childers by the Darley Arabian. This 

 is pretty good breeding, as any one will say who is 

 familiar with the early English records as kept 

 by the Messrs. Weatherby. But even Messenger's 

 title to be a Thoroughbred has been bitterly dis- 

 puted by the controversialists of recent time, this 

 controversy having been precipitated and intensi- 

 fied when, in the effort to get faster trotters, it 

 was proposed to put in more Thoroughbred blood. 

 The leader of the opposition to more Thorough- 

 bred blood was an able and ingenious writer who 

 has never had his equal in manufacturing pedi- 

 grees to suit his own theories, and at the same 



