HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 4G3 



that Electioneer could get trotters out of running-bred mares, 

 and after showing the step of the famous Palo Alto, he remarked: 

 "None of my other stallions can do that. Electioneer alone has 

 the power to get trotters out of some thoroughbred mares, but 

 not all." This ability to get a trotter out of a running mare is 

 the highest test to which the prepotency of a trotting sire can be 

 put, as is shown by the very small number that have ever 

 succeeded. 



DIRECT HEREDITY. While it is true that all inheritance must 

 come through the parents, it is also true that phenomena of form, 

 character and quality are not infrequently presented that the 

 parents do not seem to possess, and upon looking further we find 

 those phenomena in some of the more remote ancestors. When 

 we find the character of the offspring a practical reproduction of 

 one or both the parents, we designate this as a case of "direct 

 heredity" merely for the convenience of description and elucida- 

 tion. Ideal or perfect heredity never has been reached and never 

 will be. There are two sources to the life of the new being, and 

 each of these sources is made up of never-ending variations. 

 There may seem to be a very complete coalescence of the elements 

 of the sire and dam in the foal, but it is not like either of them 

 and yet it may resemble both. A mere physical resemblance to 

 a great sire is no evidence that the colt will be equally great. I 

 have seen many of the sons of the great Hambletonian, and among 

 them all the one that bore the strongest physical resemblance to 

 him was of the least value, either as a performer or a progenitor. 

 Hambletonian left many great sons behind him, some of them 

 even greater than himself, and while they all possessed certain 

 family characteristics, I cannot recall a single one that strikingly 

 resembled him in his physical conformation. From this inci- 

 dent, as well as a thousand other similar ones, we cannot avoid 

 the conclusion that heredity controls the whole animal, man or 

 beast, in his mental as well as in his physical constitution. 



CROSS HEREDITY is one of the forms of direct heredity, and 

 is not very well exemplified in trotting experiences, nor very 

 valuable in the lessons it is supposed to teach. In its first form 

 it embraces instances where the character of the sire is trans- 

 mitted to his daughters and the character of the dam is trans- 

 mitted to her sons. Long ago I established a table in the "Year 

 Book" to embrace the sires of mares that produced two or more 

 animals in the 2:30 list, but had failed to place any representa- 



