HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 465 



coming under my own observation and deliberate study, seemed 

 to be more thoroughly convincing than any or all others. 



The fact that certain qualities may lie dormant through several 

 generations and then be unexpectedly developed was well known to 

 the ancients more than two thousand years ago. Plutarch mentions 

 a Greek woman who gave birth to a negro child and was brought 

 to trial for adultery, but it was discovered that she was descended 

 in the fourth degree from an Ethiopian. Montaigne expresses 

 his astonishment at this, and remarks: 



"Is it not marvelous that this drop of seed from which we are produced 

 should bear the impression, not only of the bodily form, but even the thoughts 

 and inclinations of our fathers ? Where does this drop of water keep its infi- 

 nite number of forms? How does it bear these likenesses through a progress 

 so haphazard and so irregular that the great-grandson shall resemble the great- 

 grandfather, the nephew the uncle ? " 



The most prolific and satisfactory sources of evidence in sup- 

 port of indirect or reversionary heredity are to be found in the 

 crosses between the white and the black races. They abound in 

 all quarters wherever the two races are to be found, and many a 

 proud family has been humbled to the dust when the long-concealed 

 "black drop" makes its unexpected appearance. There are hun- 

 dreds of such cases in the world, and it is impossible to make even 

 an approximation of the number of generations that would be 

 required to wash out the stain. 



HEREDITY OF INFLUENCE. When the subject of "How to Breed 

 the Trotting Horse" was in its infancy there was a wonderful 

 amount of mystery about it. Nobody could understand why one 

 horse of the same general conformation should not trot just as 

 fast as another. When it was found that this way of looking at 

 the problem would not meet the facts, one thought it was owing 

 to the length of certain bones, another that it was all in the hind 

 quarters, another that it was "the trotting pitch," another that 

 it was "'a happy nick," etc. W'hen it was all made plain that a 

 horse was able to trot fast because his ancestors were able to trot 

 fast, the seekers for the mysterious had nothing left that suited 

 their taste but the effects of first impregnations, resting on 

 Lord Morton's story of the quagga and the mare, which is here 

 dignified with the title "Heredity of Influence." Now, just 

 how "influence," two or three years after the event, should be- 

 come a controlling factor in the paternity of a colt, is a mystery 

 sufficiently profound to satisfy our friends of earlier years, so 



