iv PREFACE. 



phenomena presented on our trotting and running courses of the 

 present day, I have not hesitated to bestow on this new feature of 

 the work great labor and research. In this I have felt a special 

 satisfaction in the fact that while the field is old in dates, this is 

 the first time it has ever been traversed and considered. 



In the chapters which follow, many historical questions are 

 treated at such length as their relative importance seems to demand, 

 embracing the different families that have contributed to the build- 

 ing up of the breed of trotters; and the question of how the trot- 

 ting horse is bred is carefully considered in the light of all past 

 experiences and brought down to the close of 1896. These chap- 

 ters will not surprise the old readers of the Wallace's Monthly, for 

 they will here meet with many thoughts that will not be new to 

 them, but they will find them more fully elaborated, in more 

 orderly form, and brought down to the latest experiences. 



It is not the purpose of this book to furnish statistical tables 

 covering the great mass of trotting experiences, nor to consider the 

 mysteries of the trainer's art that have been so ably discussed by ex- 

 perienced and skillful men. But the real and only purpose is to 

 place upon record the results of years devoted to historical research, 

 at home and abroad; to dispel the illusions and humbugs that have 

 clustered about the horse for many centuries; and to consider with 

 some minuteness, which of necessity cannot be impersonal, the 

 great industrial revolution that has been wrought in horse-breed- 

 ing, and all growing out of a little unpretentious treatise written 

 twenty-five years ago, which contained nothing more striking than 

 a little bit of science and a little bit of sense intelligently com- 

 mingled. The battle between the principles of this treatise and 

 selfish prejudices and mental sterility, was long and bitter, but the 

 truth prevailed, and in the production of the Driving Horse the 

 teachings of that little paper have placed our country first among 

 all the nations of the earth. 



JOHN H. WALLACE. 



NEW YORK: 40 WEST 93o STREET. 

 September 1, 1897 



