APPENDIX. 551 



collected and published. This part of the work entailed a vast amount of 

 research, including a thorough review of all sporting papers, annuals and 

 other sources where contemporaneous record of racing would be liable to 

 be made, but it was a very valuable feature; and, besides serving as a 

 basis for Mr. Wallace's future compilations, was unscrupulously seized upon 

 by imitators who, from time to time, sought to publish '-record books." 



There was also an introduction to the volume entitled, "An Essay on 

 the True Origin of the American Trotter," which showed a glimmering of 

 understanding of the truths of history and of breeding as now understood 

 by students well grounded in the subject. In the second volume, how- 

 ever, was an essay that marks an epoch in the literature of breeding. 

 Written less than three years after the introduction to Volume I., it be- 

 trays the fact that in the intervening years the author had risen suddenly 

 and broadened infinitely in his study of the science of breeding, and his 

 understanding of the application thereto of the facts of trotting history. 

 It advanced then entirely new views, and it was the first article published, 

 as far as the writer is aware, that rose to an appreciation of the supremacy 

 of biological laws in horse breeding, and suggested such a thing as 

 psychical heredity in the transmission of habits of action. It originated 

 the term " trotting instinct," so generally used thereafter, began the dis- 

 cussion of the problem of the increasing number of fast trotters from 

 pacing ancestors, and wound up with ten sound propositions or conclusions 

 based throughout on the law that like begets like. It opened up new and 

 endless lines of investigation and thought, and at once elevated the dis- 

 cussion to a scientific plane. This article, written by Mr. Wallace origi- 

 nally for the Spirit of the Times, marked the advent of the school of 

 thought on breeding now almost universal. 



The second volume of the "Register" was published in 1874, and the third 

 in 1879. The first three volumes of the "Register" contained about 10,000 

 pedigrees, and the statistical tables in the second and third volumes were 

 greatly improved and amplified over those in the first. Volume II. gave 

 a table of sires of 2:30 horses, with the number to the credit of each sire, 

 and the number of heats to the credit of each performer a sort of vague 

 foreshadowing of the famous " Great Table of Trotters under their Sires," 

 later to be conceived and developed by Mr. Wallace, and destined to be- 

 come the most valuable single trotting compilation yet designed, and the 

 one now universally used, adopted and imitated. This volume also gave 

 a table of 2:25 trotters to the close of 1873, arranged in the order of their 

 speed. The first table of trotters under their sires was published in 

 Wallace's Monthly, covering the statistics to the end of 1877. 



The third volume was much larger than its predecessors. The industry 

 of breeding trotting and pacing horses was, under the stimulus of the 

 " Register " and Wallace's Monthly, and other agencies with which Mr. 

 Wallace was identified, and of a general era of prosperity then dawning, 

 advancing and extending now at rapid strides, and about this time certain 



