THE ORLOFF TROTTER. 403 



years old, bad bad feet, and, besides, too mucb blood for a trotter, baving been 

 got by Sir Hale's Commoner, out of a tbree-part-bred daugbter of Rattle, son 

 of Snip." 



In this paragraph, from the best-informed man of his genera- 

 tion, it will be noted incidentally that the cry, "no more running 

 blood in the trotter," is not new, but more than a hundred years 

 old. The best performances were about sixteen miles in the 

 hour, but there was an occasional one that reached sixteen and 

 a half. A black gelding called Archer was recognized as the fast- 

 est of that period, and on one occasion under a stop watch he trotted 

 the second one of two miles in a little less than three minutes. 

 From my gleanings I find but a single instance from which we 

 might be able to approximate the money value of trotting horses of 

 that day, and this is given as a phenomenal price, viz., Marshland 

 Shales, a paternal grandson of the original Shales and out of a 

 mare by Hue and Cry. He .had beaten Reed's Driver in a match 

 of seventeen miles for 200 guineas. He was foaled 1802 and in 

 1812 he was sold at auction for 3,051 guineas $15,255. He was a 

 great horse, but this price was just as startling to Englishmen of 

 that day as the $105,000 was in our own day, when Axtell was 

 sold. This seems to have been the culmination of the "boom" 

 in Norfolk Trotters, and from then till the present there has been 

 a steady deterioration in the trotting step of the Norfolk horse. 

 In the earlier part of this period of eighty or ninety years, possi- 

 bly some exceptions may be found, but they are only individual 

 exceptions and do not controvert the broad fact that must be ap- 

 parent to all observers. They had been breeding and training 

 their horses to strike their chins with their knees the up-and- 

 down motion instead of getting away and covering some ground 

 in their action. I have stood and watched scores of them in the 

 show-ring, on their native heath, with their grooms at the ends 

 of long lines running and yelling like wild Indians to rouse up 

 their horses, and they called this training the trotters. When I 

 privately expressed the wish that saddles might be put on a few 

 of the best and the ring cleared so that the trotting action might 

 be studied, I was very kindly and politely assured that they did 

 not show their trotters that way in England. Thus with the 

 taut check-rein, the long leading-line and the whoops of the 

 groom they got the up-and-down action upon the perfection of 

 which the prizes were awarded. This explained why the splendid 



