510 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



has become sufficiently complete to satisfy the most fastidious. 

 It seems to be a real misfortune that there are so many weekly 

 journals in this field and most of them leading a precarious exist- 

 ence. It may be observed in most directions that the manage- 

 ment of these journals is hesitating and timid, as though afraid 

 that somebody might be offended and a five or ten-dollar adver- 

 tisement lost thereby. It is ail right to make the advertising 

 patronage remunerative, but it is all wrong when that depart- 

 ment is placed in control of all the others, from the fear that 

 somebody may be offended if the truth be told. In the present 

 depressed condition of the breeding interests, and. indeed of all 

 interests, the horsemen of the whole country feel that they are 

 carrying too heavy a burden in supporting so many papers, and 

 the question of the ' 'survival of the fittest" is already imminent. 

 But, whatever the present financial and intellectual condition of 

 the breeding and sporting publications of the country may be, a 

 number of them have had their part in the discussions and 

 wrangles that were naturally coincident with the progress of the 

 revolution on the question of breeding the trotter, which finally 

 brushed everything out of its way and fully established the truth 

 of the laws of inheritance. Twenty-five years ago there was a 

 good number of intelligent and capable writers on the horse, and 

 they were either engaged in editing horse papers or contributed 

 to them, and one and all they were handicapped with the idea, 

 inherited from their fathers, that whatever of excellence that was 

 found in the American horse came from the English race horse, and 

 that all the speed, at any gait, that he was able to show came from 

 the same source. From this absurd fallacy, it naturally followed 

 that speed at the trot was merely the result of accident or of the 

 persistent skill of the trainer. This was, substantially, the view 

 of the general public at that date. 



When, therefore, it was announced that the horse was far more 

 than a mere machine, that he had a mental as well as a physical 

 organization, that these were both equally matters of inheritance, 

 that one horse ran fast because his ancestors ran fast and that 

 another horse trotted fast because his ancestors were able to trot 

 fast, and that no fast runner was ever a fast trotter, there was a 

 tremendous hubbub. This was a new gospel, and it threatened 

 to annihilate the stupid Anglo- Arabian fetish that all that was 

 good in horsedom must of necessity come from that source. For 

 generations the belief had been universal that the only way to 



