102 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 



this time before I ever saw or heard of the misbegotten and fool- 

 ish compilation of pedigrees made by Edgar. For some years 

 this labor of compilation was prosecuted at odd hours, for my 

 own personal use and satisfaction, and without the remotest pur- 

 pose of ever publishing a stud book. As I plodded my way 

 along, finding what I supposed to be a fact here and another 

 there, and often conflicting, I found myself invariably accepting 

 what was longest as a pedigree, as this feature seemed to be evi- 

 dence not only of completeness, but of truthfulness at the same 

 time. As my gleanings grew in volume my interest in what I 

 was doing became more absorbing and intense, and when I had com- 

 pleted the search of every page and paragraph of my published 

 sources of information, up to the close of the year 1839, I found I 

 had enough matter for a large volume. About this time I came 

 into possession of a copy of "Edgar's Stud Book" and I wa& 

 greatly perplexed to know what to do with it. The copyright 

 was dead and it contained a good many unimportant and utterly 

 unknown things that I had not met with in all my gleanings. 

 Under these circumstances and considering the fact that it 

 abounded in the crudest uncertainties, to call them by no harsher 

 name, I concluded to use his work in all cases where I did not 

 have a pedigree from other sources, to cut off all imaginary ex- 

 tensions and to insert his name, in every case, as the source of in- 

 formation and responsibility. The work then went to press and 

 the first volume of "Wallace's American Stud Book" made its ap- 

 pearance in 1871. The time and labor expended on the first 

 volume made me quite familiar with the leading performers of 

 the several generations embraced therein, and the work on the 

 second volume went forward with more ease and rapidity, and in 

 1871 I had completed the gleaning of all publications relating to 

 the race horse, up to the close of 1870. 



This second volume, being about the size of the first, was com- 

 pleted and put in due form for the compositor, but never was 

 published. The reason why it was never published may not be 

 without interest to the student of horse genealogy, and I will, in 

 a few words, state that reason. Side by side with the progress 

 of the second volume of the runners, I was carrying forward a care- 

 ful investigation of the lineage of the early trotters and their pro- 

 genitors. As there were no trotting records giving pedigrees, I 

 was compelled to go back to the breeders as the only source of 

 reliable information. When I obtained this from intelligent and 



