HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 511 



improve the horse for any purpose under the sun was to * 'breed 

 up" to the running horse and thus get back to the blood of the 

 pure Arabian. On the other hand, and as opposed to this ancient 

 fallacy that the way to breed the trotter was to go to the runner, 

 it was urged, with a thousand proofs at the back of it, that the 

 way to breed the the runner was to go to the horse that could 

 run, and the way to breed the trotter was to go to the horse that 

 could trot. Here was a direct issue squarely made, and it was 

 not to be expected that such men as Charles J. Foster, Peter C. 

 Kellogg, Joseph C. Simpson, etc., all writers of ability, would 

 quietly surrender without a battle. They had committed them- 

 selves to the running-blood traditions, some rich men had shaped 

 their breeding studs in that direction, and without deciding 

 whether a rich man had necessarily more sense than a poor one, 

 they knew instinctively that a rich man could be more liberal in 

 advertising, and that he could be more generous in properly 

 recognizing the little courtesies that might be extended in the 

 way of keeping his establishment before the public in an approv- 

 ing light. Thus, with an eye to the weather-gauge, the editors 

 were able to maintain their own consistency. As the experiences 

 of every succeeding year added thousands of proofs to the plain 

 proposition that the trotter inherits his speed from a trotting 

 ancestry, the "irreconcilables" began to shift their ground, con- 

 ceding that there must be trotting blood to give the action, but 

 that there must be ''speed-sustaining" blood from the thorough- 

 bred to give courage and endurance. This was the second posi- 

 tion, and in a commercial sense it was shrewdly chosen for the 

 advantage of certain localities. This position furnished the 

 "thoroughbred foundation" argument, and for a time it had its 

 supporters. This theory also furnished its promised commercial 

 advantages to such localities as had formerly bred running horses, 

 and it was but a week till everybody in those localities had 

 * 'thorough bred foundations" for their trotting pedigrees, and 

 those who did not have them could easily procure them. This 

 brought an avalanche of pedigrees, especially from Kentuckv, 

 with "thoroughbred foundations," consisting of long strings of 

 dams by famous horses, but without names, dates, breeders or 

 histories, and many of them impossible. To checkmate this 

 inundation of manufactured foundations, in the office of the 

 Register, a rule was adopted requiring satisfactory identification 

 and history of each dam, and where that could not be given the 



