HOW THE TROTTING HOKSE IS BRED. 515 



and handling, are the two factors that will always put the Ameri- 

 can trotting horse in the front rank and keep him there. 



In the early chapters of this work we have considered the 

 horse in his original habitat and his distribution among the 

 different peoples of the then known world, but we have not con- 

 sidered the distribution of the trotter through the different 

 regions of our own country. Fifty or sixty years ago the trot- 

 ting horse was hardly known outside of a limited territory em- 

 bracing the cities of New York and Philadelphia. In the New 

 England States the trappy little Morgan filled the place of the 

 driving horse with very great acceptance, but he had no speed as 

 a trotter. We then began to see and hear something of the 

 " Maine Messengers," that were trotters in reality and able to 

 demonstrate their speed and courage on the track. Occasionally 

 a converted pacer would strike a trot and show speed that was 

 phenomenal in that day, but it was uniformly treated as "acci- 

 dental." There was a great deal of high-class trotting blood in 

 the region of Philadelphia, and for a time that was the leading 

 center of the trotting interest, but it did not receive that measure 

 of encouragement and support that was necessary to its permanent 

 growth, and the seat of empire was transferred to Long Island 

 and Orange' County, New York. South of Mason and Dixon's 

 line the trotter was tabooed, as a mongrel nondescript, and "not 

 worthy of the attention of a gentleman, sah." They had run- 

 ners and they had pacers, and as all excellence in the shape of a 

 horse, at whatever gait, as they argued, must come from the 

 running horse or his progenitor, the Arabian, they had already 

 the very best material in the world for the production of the fast 

 trotter. The belief as expressed in their motto, "Speed at the 

 gallop was a guarantee of speed at any other gait required," per- 

 vaded all minds and directed all action in matters of breeding. 

 Thus they worked away for years trying to breed trotters from 

 blood that never could and that never did trot, and, strange as 

 it may seem, there are still some people in that region, at the 

 close of the nineteenth century, trying to breed trotters from 

 runners. From New York as a common center all the breeding 

 States obtained their supplies of trotting blood, and they in time 

 became sources of supply. The only exception to this is that of 

 the pacer, which eventually developed into a trotting element 

 of some prominence and value, especially in the West and South. 



The prominence of Kentucky as a breeding center is wholly 



