HOW THE TROTTIKG HORSE IS BRED. 503 



general sense, and when you came to talk to him about "nicks" 

 and "trotting pitch" and all that kind of tomfoolery, his mind 

 simply recurred to the old adage uttered generations ago: "Trot 

 father, trot mother, trot colt." His whole philosophy was 

 wrapped up in the one central truth that the horse that could go 

 out and trot fast, when hred on the mare that could go out and 

 trot fast, would produce a colt that would go out and trot fast. 

 This was sufficient for him or indeed for anybody else, for it con- 

 tains and expresses the whole substance of the laws of heredity. 

 Mr. Smith's great mares acquired in their training and develop- 

 ment new characters and new capacities which they never would 

 have possessed had it not been for the care and skill expended in 

 their training. Here we touch the very marrow of a question 

 around which the scientists of to-day are warring. Darwin 

 taught that such acquisitions were transmissible, of the truth of 

 which I have no doubt, but a post-Darwinian school has arisen 

 which controverts this position, and claims that it weakens and 

 destroys the whole evolution theory of creation. But it matters 

 not about the hypothesis of evolution concerning things we 

 know, for it is simply an attempt to show how all tilings might 

 have been created without a Creator. I have read a great deal 

 about evolution and the transmissibility of acquired characters, 

 but in all I have read I never have met with a lesson so broad and 

 so strong as that furnished by Henry N. Smith's great mares, 

 proving that acquired characters are transmitted. 



In instituting a comparison between the high-class products of 

 the Palo Alto and the Fashion Stud Farms, it seems to be neces- 

 sary to place the premier stallions of the two side and side. 

 They were half-brothers on the side of the sire, but Electioneer 

 had the greatest speed-producing dam of her generation. She 

 was a fast natural trotter herself, and was out of a fast and fully 

 developed trotter. Jay Gould was out of a good road mare by 

 American Star, but nobody has ever said she had any speed, and 

 she was out of a nondescript mare that we know nothing about. 

 Gould's dam never produced any other trotter with a reputable 

 rate of speed, so far as I have been able to learn. Electioneer 

 was trained and developed by Mr. Backman, but he never was in 

 a race, and consequently he has no official record. After he 

 was taken to Palo Alto he was given quite regular work, and 

 it is beyond all doubt that when in stud condition he could show 

 a quarter in a little better than a 2:20 gait. The difference in 



