MESSENGER AND HIS ANCESTORS. 



still more convincing. Messenger possessed and transmitted 

 qualities that no throughbred horse, in the experience of man, 

 ever possessed and transmitted." This was a declaration of Messen- 

 ger as a progenitor against the whole world of thoroughbreds, 

 and Mr. Simpson felt that he could not let it pass unchallenged, 

 and after scratching about among the thousands of thorough- 

 breds without finding anything, like poor Mr. Foster, he 

 "acknowledges the corn," and comes back with Mambrino, the 

 son of Messenger, without, seemingly, once realizing that he was 

 proving my contention. 



The theory that if any other English race horse had been in 

 Messenger's place and bred upon the same mares and had his 

 progeny developed as Messenger's were developed, he would have 

 produced the same results, has always been very popular with 

 the advocates of "more running blood in the trotter." No 

 doubt there are still some honest, but not well-informed people, 

 who hold to this view merely because they have never heard of 

 any other imported English horses that were contemporaneous 

 with Messenger, and hence have concluded there were none. If 

 Messenger had been all alone during the twenty years of his stud 

 services, as this theory assumes, there might be some reason to 

 doubt whether some other English race horses might not have 

 done just as well in establishing a line or tribe of trotters. But 

 was he alone? From the close of the Kevolutionary War to the 

 end of the last century was a period of great activity and enter- 

 prise in the way of importing running horses from Great Britain. 

 The blood of Herod and English Eclipse was in the highest esti- 

 mate, not only in the old but in the new world, and a great many 

 distinguished horses were brought over possessing those favorite- 

 strains. During that period racing was carried on with just as 

 much spirit and eclat on Long Island and the river counties of 

 New York, New Jersey, and some of the eastern counties of 

 Pennsylvania as it was in Virginia and South Carolina. Horses 

 of the most fashionable lineage were sought after and patronized, 

 not by a few great breeding establishments, but by the farmers 

 generally, in all the region here designated. The following list 

 of imported English race horses is made up of animals that were- 

 contemporaneous with Messenger, covering the same mares and 

 the offspring subjected to precisely the same treatment and con- 

 ditions. The list is limited to what may be called the trotting 

 latitudes, and embraces such animals only as were brought into- 



