HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 513 



things and foolish in others. When we come to study the 

 phenomena he presents, we find he has studied the subjects on 

 which he is wise, and he is ignorant on the subjects on which he 

 is foolish. Like ''Brother Jasper," the negro preacher, he is 

 ready to maintain against all comers that "the sun do move." 

 Another class of men in the writing fraternity, but fortunately 

 they are restricted in numbers, have brains enough to apprehend 

 the facts surrounding them and their teachings, but they have 

 not conscience enough to lift them above their toadying instincts, 

 for fear they might miss the crumbs from a rich patron's table. 

 Another type of man, generally a beginner in the breeding busi- 

 ness, has a half-and-half-bred stallion at the head of his little 

 stud, and he is uniformly an enthusiast for the ' 'thoroughbred 

 foundation." As might be expected, he fills the columns of all 

 the papers accessible with his "views of breeding," which are 

 always shaped to fit his own stallion and bring him patronage. 

 We might here go on and point out other types of would-be 

 "teachers" that would be entertaining, but certainly not profita- 

 ble or instructive. We might follow the vagaries of different 

 writers and show the origin and reason for those vagaries, but as 

 the breeding world has become far more intelligent, and I think 

 more honest, than it was twenty-five years ago, one vagary after 

 another has disappeared and been buried out of sight. All such 

 trumpery as, "to breed the trotter you must go to the runner," 

 "more running blood in the trotter," "thoroughbred founda- 

 tion," etc., are phrases that are never heard in our day among 

 intelligent breeders. A mile in two minutes and thirty seconds 

 is "played out" as an evidence of trotting speed, but it is still 

 held in its place as such evidence to suit the blood and methods 

 of development at one particular establishment, and to gather in 

 the money for registration from the little fellows. 



Anything slower than "two-twenty" is no longer looked upon 

 as of any value in a trotting sense. 



This astonishing increase of speed has come hand in hand with 

 a closer and more careful observance of the law of inheritance, 

 or heredity. If we breed the merino ram upon a merino ewe, we 

 know that the produce will be a merino. If we breed the 

 cotswold on the cotswold we know the produce will be a cotswold, 

 but if we breed the merino on the cotswold the produce will be a 

 mongrel. The phsyical inheritance is destroyed, and in propagat- 

 ing from this mongrel confusion, uncertainty and disappoint- 



