IIO\V THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 4?3 



have been a tincture of pacing blood in the Spanish horses of the 

 sixteenth century. The Visigoths, one of the early Asiatic hordes 

 that overran Europe, first settled in Scandinavia, and the south- 

 ern part of Sweden is still called "Gothland." After a long stay 

 in that country they became dissatisfied with soil and climate 

 and determined to seek another. According to the historians, 

 they first migrated in a southeastward direction and from 

 there in a southwestward till they reached the southern part of 

 France, from which they soon passed over into Spain, which they 

 subdued, and established there a dynasty which lasted two hun- 

 dred years. In A.D. 711 the Saracens from Africa crossed over, 

 and after a very bloody battle lasting two days, defeated Ehoderic, 

 the last of the dynasty, and cut his army to pieces. In Scandina- 

 via, and especially in Norway and Sweden, we find plenty of dun 

 horses that are pacers, and they are recognized as a very old 

 hreed. In the mountains of Spain we also find small dun horses, 

 and it is, perhaps, not an unreasonable possibility that the 

 Visigoths may have carried some of their horse stock with them 

 in their migration from the North to the South of Europe, and 

 thus this habit of action that may have remained for centuries 

 latent in the breed may have been unusually plastic in its res- 

 toration. This, however, is a mere surmise as to a possibility 

 and cannot displace the historic observations reported by M. 

 Eoulin and presented before the French Academy. The gait of 

 the South American pacers, as I understand it, is not that of the 

 pure pace, with two strokes completing the revolution, but is 

 more like the "saddle gaits" that we find in the West and South- 

 west of our own country. The true pace seems to be exceptional, 

 hecause that is not a saddle gait. It is a fact often observed in 

 this country that foals from parents trained to the saddle gaits 

 will take to those gaits naturally and as soon as they are dropped. 

 In a preceding part of this work I have given some consideration 

 to the fact that three or four hundred years ago the horses of our 

 English ancestors were largely pacers, and to the methods adopted 

 in that day for changing the action from the diagonal to the 

 lateral gait the hopples, rattles, weights, etc. The descendants 

 of those horses, brought to this country by the colonists, as will 

 be seen at another place, were nearly all pacers. 



The following letter, addressed by Dr. William Huggins to 

 Charles Darwin and by him published in "Nature" twenty years 

 ago, very strongly illustrates the heredity of instincts, and as it 



