MESSENGER AND HIS ANCESTORS. 215 



yenor really made such an offer, but only that he was "reported" 

 to have made it. This does not prove that the offer was formally 

 made, but it does prove that Mambrino had a very remarkable 

 trotting step or such a topic would not have been considered at 

 TattersalPs subscription rooms. As this writer seems to refer to 

 Mambrino and Infidel only as exceptional horses for their trot- 

 ting step among thoroughbreds, we may take it for granted that 

 Mambrino was considered exceptional, in his day. It is not 

 probable that he was ever trained an hour at the trot, and we 

 must conclude, therefore, that whatever speed he showed was his 

 natural and undeveloped gait. It will be observed that Mr. 

 Pick's paragraph was dated 1805, and the letter from the "sub- 

 scription rooms" 1814, so that they could not have been mere re- 

 flections of theories advanced on this side of the Atlantic in rela- 

 iion to Messenger being a great source of trotting speed. These 

 two facts were on record long before any "Messenger theories" 

 were in existence, and those "theories" were formulated long be- 

 fore these two facts were known. The conclusions reached on 

 both sides of the water are entirely harmonious, but they were 

 reached in complete independence of each other. 



MESSENGER, son of Mambrino, was a grey horse about fifteen 

 hands two inches high, with strong, heavy bone and a generally 

 coarse appearance for a horse represented to be thoroughbred. 

 From the Racing Calendar, and not from the Stud Book, we learn 

 that he was foaled 1780, and came out of a mare represented to 

 be by Turf, and she out of a mare by Regains, son of Godolphin 

 Arabian, etc., as represented by Mr. Weatherby in his Stud 

 Book. By looking back to the beginning of this chapter the 

 form in which the entry appears in the Stud Book will be fully 

 comprehended. The identity, history, and breeding of the dam 

 of Messenger is the central point in this inquiry, and we must do 

 our work carefully and thoroughly. From the form of the entry 

 in the Stud Book, it will be understood that the breeder of each 

 animal is supposed to appear opposite the foals of his own breed- 

 ing, but this we have found in more than a thousand instances 

 to be wholly imaginary on the part of the compiler. If the 

 animal ran, the name of the party running him is far more apt 

 to appear than the name of the breeder. It will be observed, 

 also, that the Turf fillies of 1773 and 1774 appear without their 

 <3olor being known. These fillies seem to be put in there to par- 

 tially fill the gap between 1771 and 1777. Mr. Pick says the dam 



