THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



from which I would infer that Mr. Weatherby considered her 

 breeding all right, but the two fillies, one of them the dam of 

 Messenger, have been treated as spurious and wholly omitted 

 from the records. These are the facts relating to these two 

 fillies claimed originally to be by Turf, and there can be no moral 

 doubt that they were omitted or excluded because Mr. Weatherby 

 deemed them unsustained and probably spurious. 



In confirmation of the facts and circumstances already adduced, 

 going to show that Messenger was not thoroughbred, we are now 

 ready to consider one of the strongest arguments that can be 

 advanced in support of that conclusion. This argument is 

 founded on the laws of nature and is not dependent upon the 

 mere writing down of uncertain traditions. Messenger pos- 

 sessed and transmitted qualities that no thoroughbred horse has 

 ever transmitted, from the period when the breed of race horses, 

 was formed to the present day. It is practically conceded on all 

 hands that Messenger, by his own power and by his own right, 

 founded a family of trotting horses, and this fact will be fully 

 demonstrated in coming chapters. It is equally plain and, with 

 honest and intelligent people, it is accepted with equal readiness, 

 that no thoroughbred horse has ever done this. This declara- 

 tion has been much controverted, but always in a general way 

 and without specifying any particular thoroughbred horse that 

 had succeeded in establishing a family of trotters. In the prog- 

 ress of a discussion of this point with the late Charles J. Foster, 

 a very clear and able writer, he was directly challenged, in a 

 manner that could not be dodged, to name the thoroughbred 

 horse outside of Messenger, that had accomplished this feat. 

 Greatly to my surprise, and I might say, gratification, he came 

 back at me with two of Messenger's sons Hambletonian and 

 Mambrino. Thus he conceded the whole contention, for out of, 

 literally, thousands he had to come back to two sons of Messenger. 



In reply to an article in Wallace's Monthly for December, 1887,. 

 going to show that Messenger was not a thoroughbred horse, Mr. 

 Joseph Cairn Simpson, of California, an able man and a lifelong 

 advocate of more running blood in the trotter, wrote a review of 

 the article in question. After admitting the full force of the 

 demonstration that Messenger was not a thoroughbred horse, 

 there is one sentence to which Mr. Simpson cannot subscribe, 

 and he quotes it as follows: "Complete and conclusive as these 

 facts may be. there is still another fact equally complete and 



