HOW THE TROTTIXG HORSE IS BRED. 489 



the other of these gaits. It seems like a needless work to 

 expend any time or space on what is self-evident in all human ex- 

 periences. A few years ago I offered a money reward, of sufficient 

 amount to justify some labor in a search, to any one who would 

 report to me any thoroughbred running horse, with the proofs, 

 that had ever made a trotting record of a mile in three minutes, 

 and there was no response. Some years later I renewed the 

 offer, doubling the amount of the former offer, and still there 

 came no response. I regret now that I did not make the offer 

 for a mile in four minutes instead of three, for I very much 

 doubt whether there ever was a thoroughbred horse able to trot 

 a mile in four minutes. What is the use, then, of giving further 

 attention to the consideration of the value of thoroughbred run- 

 ning blood in the trotter? 



But after conceding that the instinct to stick to the trot and 

 the step of the trotter must come from the trotter, the advocates 

 of "more running blood in the trotter" plant all their heavy 

 guns on the proposition that running blood is needed to give the 

 trotter more courage, endurance, and beauty of form. In all 

 the past years we have had so many grand panegyrics on the will 

 power and undying courage of the "courser of the desert" that 

 they have become threadbare and have an "ancient and fish-like 

 smell," and we would prefer to exchange them for something 

 more recent and practical. When we go to a race meeting and 

 see so many contests at various distances less than a mile, a few at 

 something over a mile, and all these merely single dashes, we 

 naturally and justly conclude that the distance of ground to be 

 covered in each contest is adjusted to the courage and stamina 

 of the racers. I cannot conceive of any fairer criterion by which 

 to determine the measure of gameness and pluck of running 

 horses than simply to consider the distance chosen, and that for a 

 single dash. Trainers and owners know just where each horse will 

 quit, if hard pressed, and they will not enter him in any distance 

 beyond the point where they know his courage will fail. With 

 the data of distances for these single dashes already fixed for 

 the accommodation of horses with different degrees of staying 

 qualities, and after making a liberal allowance for age and lack 

 of condition, we seem to have a solid foundation for a safe con- 

 clusion that the crucial test of the speed of the average race 

 horse fails him before he reaches the first mile-post. 



When the trotter starts out for his summer's campaign he has no 



