TROTTING FAMILIES. 55 



such a thing as a trotting thoroughbred. That is, 

 when a family of trotters has been subjected for a 

 considerable period to race-horse usage, it tends to 

 acquire race-horse or thoroughbred traits. Courage, 

 a fine nervous organization, muscle, and lung power 

 are developed by the severe contests, the high feed- 

 ing, the careful training, which fall to the lot of a 

 trotter, and when this process has been continued for 

 some generations its effects are marked. 



The breeding of trotters is only beginning to be 

 a science. In the early days, pedigrees were very 

 slightly considered, and the transmission of qualities 

 was not appreciated or understood. Then came a 

 period when the value of pedigree was over-esti- 

 mated ; or, more correctly, when the value of such 

 trotting pedigrees as we had was over-estimated. It 

 must be remembered that the trotter is not a fixed 

 type j he is commonly of mixed descent, and therefore 

 members of the same family, own orothers and sisters, 

 for example, may differ widely in capacity. This is 

 true of course, in some degree, of thoroughbreds, 

 but it is far less true of them than it is of trotters. 

 Almost any thoroughbred in training can run a mile 

 in 1.42 or 1.43, and as the fastest will run it in 1.35J 

 or thereabout, the difference between them is not very 

 great. But the fastest time for a mile at the trotting 

 gait is 2.08§, and there are many very well-bred 

 trotters who cannot trot a mile faster than three or 

 even four minutes. This wide difference is accounted 

 for by the fact that the trotter has scarcely emerged 

 from the mongrel state, and consequently the own 

 brother of a very superior animal may " throw back," 

 either in himself or in his descendants, to some an- 



