412 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



known in history and from what has been preserved in art, in- 

 stead of "Godolphin Arabian" his true title should be "Godolphin 

 Frenchman." But this subject has been discussed at greater 

 length in the chapter on the English Race Horse,, to which my 

 reader is here referred. 



In the chapter on the American Race Horse, I think sufficient 

 attention has been given to the frauds and impossibilities that 

 are to be found everywhere in the extended pedigrees of our own 

 running horses to satisfy any one that the remote extensions of 

 pedigrees are a great mass of dishonest rubbish, with scarcely a 

 speck of truth to be found. I will, therefore, pass along to the 

 consideration of some of the difficulties, of the same nature, that 

 have been developed in investigating and recording the pedigrees 

 of the American Trotting Horse. In entering the untrodden 

 wilderness of trotting-horse history it became the ambition of 

 my life to reach the truth in every possible instance and to cut 

 off and reject all frauds wherever they showed their heads. This 

 meant war from the beginning with a great many horsemen, but 

 it also meant the enthusiastic support of a great many honest 

 men. The trouble, at this point, was in the fact that a number 

 of prominent, wealthy and influential breeders insisted upon 

 their right to state their pedigrees in their own way and thus 

 compel me to indorse them by inserting them in the Trotting 

 Register. When at work on the early volumes of the Register, 

 especially the first, if a man of unblemished reputation and intel- 

 ligence sent me a list of his stock to be registered, I assumed 

 that he had too much regard for his reputation and standing as 

 a breeder to print a lot of pedigrees in his catalogue that he did 

 not know to be correct, and hence I accepted many a pedigree 

 that was based upon fiction. In course of time it began to dawn 

 upon my understanding that there were many men in the world 

 of unsullied reputation, as they were known in their business 

 relations, who would stand up boldly for a fiction or a fraud in 

 the pedigrees of their stock. It is but just to say that all the men 

 who uttered fraudulent pedigrees were not equally guilty, for in 

 some cases the owners had been victimized by unscrupulous 

 rogues from whom they had purchased, and in others they had 

 been betrayed by the still more unscrupulous rogues whom they 

 had employed to make up their catalogues on the supposition 

 that they were capable and honest. This state of things soon 

 developed another line of thought and observation in my mind 



