490 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



choice as to the length of his races, and he is not looking about for 

 single dashes of four, five, six or seven furlongs, but enters the field 

 boldly and throws down the glove to all the best strains of trot- 

 ting and pacing blood. Every race will be mile heats, best two 

 in three or three in five, and it often requires six, seven or eight 

 heats before the victor is declared. This experience is repeated, 

 week after week, during the whole season. Such a weekly ex- 

 perience as this, continued through twenty consecutive weeks, 

 would probably destroy the best and stoutest running horse now 

 living. This is the test to which the trotter is subjected, and 

 no man can say it lacks in severity in determining his qualities 

 as a race horse, in his stamina, his courage and his gameness. 

 In touching this point I will here take the liberty of entering my 

 protest against what I consider the unnecessary severity of this 

 test. We want all these tests, and from the standpoint of the 

 breeder we cannot progress without them, but we want them to 

 stop short of injury to the animal. When a contest is drawn out 

 to six, eight or ten heats, it not only becomes cruel as a sport, 

 but it is liable to inflict irreparable injury to the soundness of 

 the animal. Unsoundness, either external or internal, is liable to 

 result from all such abuses. This is a dominant fact, and while 

 we may not be able to see the injury with the eye, we are likely 

 to see the evil results in the progeny. Animals of the kind most 

 likely to be subjected to this over-severity of test are the hope 

 of the future as producers, and by all means wise and possible we 

 should seek to preserve them in their pristine soundness and 

 vigor. As breeders we cannot afford to let them go without 

 development and test, neither can we aiford to impair or destroy 

 their producing qualities, in the test. This can be done only by 

 shortening the race; not the distance of ground, but the number 

 of heats that can be trotted. With an inflexible rule that not 

 more than five heats should be trotted in any race, and that at 

 the conclusion of the fifth heat the money should be divided ac- 

 cording to ths places of the contestants, I would not be particular 

 as to whether the race was for the best two in three, or the best 

 three in five. The invariable results have been that in long- 

 drawn-out contests of many heats there have been bargains and 

 combinations for or against certain horses, and all managed by 

 and in the interest of the so-called "speculators." If this were 

 done the combinations of the gamblers would be checkmated, 

 the cruelty of the sport would be eliminated, and our best horses 



