RECOLLECTIONS OF MEN AND HORSES 



you want a fast trotter, you must breed a fast trotter 

 to a fast trotter, and, if you want a fast runner, you 

 must breed a fast runner to a fast runner. Governor 

 Stanford has demonstrated at Palo Alto that you 

 can breed a runner of the right conformation and 

 temperament to a trotter and get a trotter with a 

 high degree of certainty. Another case is that of 

 Fanny Witherspoon — fastest two mile record. In 

 the sum of inherited habits there are two kinds of 

 action, but the blending is such that one helps the 

 other. The intense stride of the trotter is lengthened 

 and the speed proportionately increased. General 

 Tracy will have to make his law of heredity a little 

 more elastic. When he appeals to history he is met 

 with the fact that the fastest performers are not 

 from record-crowned individuals. The stallions 

 through which the lines were transmitted were not 

 developed — did not have the trotting habit intensi- 

 fied by use, by severe tests on the track. I will start 

 with Messenger, the thoroughbred runner. He got 

 Mambrino, a thoroughbred; he got Abdallah, he 

 Hambletonian, he Harold, and he Maud S., 2.o8f, 

 the fastest and gamest trotter to date. Not one of 

 the male ancestors of the queen was ever developd 

 in harness to a record. Now take the female line 

 of the stallions — Amazonia, Charles Kent mare. En- 

 chantress — all undeveloped. The dam of Maud S. 

 herself was by Pilot Jr., who has no record, and her 

 dam was by Boston, a runner. From the beginning 

 to the end no habit of harness action was intensified 

 by use on the track, no stallion or dam was cam- 

 paigned, much less trained, to a record of 2.22 and 

 better, and yet the outcome is the fastest trotter 

 that the world has seen. Probably it was a good 

 thing that the trotting habit was not strengthened 



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