514 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



ment always follow. If we go a step higher and consider those 

 types of domestic animals endowed with a species of mentality 

 that we call instinct, we find the illustrations still more marked 

 and effective. The finely bred greyhound coupled with the 

 finely bred pointer produces neither a greyhound nor a pointer, 

 but only a nondescript cur. Sometimes the instincts of the 

 greyhound and sometimes the instincts of the pointer may be the 

 more masterful, but the inheritance is broken and divided, and 

 the mongrel should never be used for propagation. If we couple 

 the very best specimen of the English race horse with the very 

 best and fastest American trotting mare, the produce would be 

 literally half-and-half bred. The sire never could trot a mile in 

 four minutes and the dam never could run a mile in two minutes, 

 and what is the produce good for? Once in a hundred times the 

 running instinct might predominate and develop something of 

 a runner, and once in a hundred times the trotting instinct 

 might predominate, as in the case of Bonnie Scotland and Water- 

 witch, and produce something of a trotter, but of what value 

 would the half-and-half progeny be for breeding purposes? 

 Whatever might be the characteristics of their progeny, physi- 

 cally, they would undoubtedly and invariably inherit and transmit 

 not only divided, but antagonistic, instincts that would require 

 generations of careful selection and training to get rid of. While 

 the "featherheads" may, for the sake of personal consistency, 

 which is a very weighty matter of public concern, still advocate 

 "more running blood in the trotter;" and while one great con- 

 cern may still look one way, on this question, and row the other, 

 it being literally true that she has not added a single drop of 

 running blood to her trotting stud in a quarter of a century, it 

 is safe to say that the whole body of intelligent breeders of this 

 country have come to accept and obey the great central truth 

 that the American trotter has reached his present state of perfec- 

 tion by the development of his unbroken and undivided trotting 

 inheritances. These inheritances have been cumulative and thus 

 made stronger in each developed generation of ancestors, and if 

 this high development of speed is kept up for a series of succes- 

 sive generations the speed of the American trotter will be placed 

 at a point of which we have never yet dreamed. The inherited 

 and developed instinct to stick to the trot as the fastest gait of 

 which the horse is conscious, coupled with skillful preparation 



