504 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



the rate of speed, therefore, as between the two horses was not 

 very great, but whatever it was must go to the credit of Jay 

 Gould. But the offspring of Electioneer had a very great advan- 

 tage over those of Jay Gould in the methodical and skillful de- 

 velopment of their speed. In his maternal inheritance as a trot- 

 ter, as already indicated, Electioneer had a marked superiority, 

 and on an equally high class of developed mares he would have 

 far outstripped his rival. Now, with this attempt at a clean-cut 

 description of the two horses, we are ready to consider the ques- 

 tion in its arithmetical elements, and it will be found a plain 

 question of "simple proportion" which anybody can solve in a, 

 minute, as follows: "If the Fashion Stud Farm from thirty 

 mares produced thirteen trotters with public records of 2:15 or 

 better, how many of equal capacity should the Palo Alto Farm 

 have produced from three hundred mares?" The answer is one 

 hundred and thirty, but the facts, up to the close of 1896, 

 furnish us with the beggarly number of eighteen. 



The grand assemblage of so many great trotters at the Fashion 

 Stud Farm, and all for the purpose of breeding, was the subject 

 of much comment among breeders from one end of the land to 

 the other, and not a few pronounced it all wrong and that it. 

 would be succeeded by failure. Mr. Smith lacked some of the 

 elements that go toward making a man popular, and hence, in 

 many cases, there was not much sympathy between him and his 

 brother breeders, but he held tenaciously to the central truth 

 that the way to breed high-class trotters was to mate high-class 

 trotters. His experience has clearly demonstrated the soundness 

 of this canon of breeding, and it has just as clearly demonstrated 

 the unsoundness of the notion that high-class trotters can be 

 bred from animals that never trotted and never could be made to 

 trot. The law, as we have taught it for years, has been vindi- 

 cated, and that by experiences so wide and so complete that it 

 can no longer be controverted. Mr. Smith has achieved a great, 

 honor, and as a producer of high-class speed he stands at the head 

 of all American trotting-horse breeders. 



As we have now considered a great triumph, with the causes 

 that led up to it and the lesson it has taught, it seems to be in 

 order to give an example of a great failure and the causes which 

 have produced it. For more than forty years Woodburn Farm, 

 in Kentucky, has been breeding trotters, and up to the close of 

 1896 just four with records of 2:15 or better have hailed from. 



