RELATIONS OF THE AMERICAN PACER TO THE PACER. 187 



It is not my purpose here to undertake to discuss the reasons 

 for the almost continuous supremacy of the pacer over the trot- 

 ter, for there is no data from which I might frame a conclusion 

 that would really "hold water." At best, therefore, I can only 

 suggest two or three thoughts. Speed at the pace is older, and has 

 been longer in the process of development, than speed at the 

 trot. In 1747 pacing races had then been fashionable in Mary- 

 land, and had been carried on in that colony time out of mind, 

 but we have no trace of trotting races. One year later (1748) 

 "running, pacing and trotting" races had become so numerous 

 and so common in the colony of New Jersey that they were de- 

 clared a nuisance and suppressed by the legislative authority. 

 My impression from the language of the act is that it was aimed 

 chiefly at the running and the pacing races, and that the trotters 

 were not very numerous. It seems to be a reasonable conclusion 

 that this racing mania in New Jersey took its rise about 1665, 

 when Governor Nicolls established the Newmarket race course 

 on Long Island, and if so, it had been growing in strength for 

 over eighty years, and if we add the time from then till now we 

 find that the speed of the pacer has been going on almost 

 continuously for over two hundred years in our own 

 country. There is another fact entering into the rural life 

 of colonial times that must not be left out of consideration. 

 The pacer was the universal saddle horse, and the trotter never 

 was tolerated for that service. Every farmer's son had his saddle 

 horse, and when two of them met what so natural and common as 

 to determine then and there which was the faster, if a little 

 stretch of road offered? In these neighborhood rivalries, if not 

 in actual racing, the instinct of speed at the pace was kept alive 

 and developed, from generation to generation. If I am right in 

 this little study of colonial life, we can understand that the in- 

 heritance of speed at the pace has come down to our own time 

 through a great many generations of pacers, and hence the pace 

 is the faster gait. There is one fact in our own experience that 

 seems to sustain this with great force, and that is the small 

 amount of "pounding" that the pacer requires in order to reach 

 the full development of his powers. There is no need of driving 

 a pacer to death in order to teach him how to pace, for he already 

 knows how to pace, and all that is needed in the way of training 

 is to get him into high condition. It may be possible that the 

 lateral action is faster than the diagonal because it is less compli- 



