TROTTING RACES. 89 



been compressed until they nearly meet. On these 

 tracks the horses start from one end of the loop, go 

 up one side, come back on the other, and finish at 

 the starting point. The kite track is considered to 

 be about two seconds faster than the ordinary or 

 regulation track, because it consists almost entirely 

 of two long stretches; but it is of course very un- 

 satisfactory to the spectator, who is able to see, 

 in any real sense, only tne beginning and the finish 

 of the race. It seems unlikely that these tracks will 

 long be tolerated. 1 



Then, too, the footing has greatly been improved. 

 The best tracks now have an nnderlayer of turf or 

 of bog grass, which makes them springy, and the 

 surface is soft without being deep or heavy. The 

 sulky drawn by Dutchman, the old-time trotter, of 

 whom I have spoken in a former chapter, weighed 

 eighty-two pounds. Hiram Woodruff, writing in 

 1867, mentioned this fact, adding, " I now have two 

 that weigh less than sixty pounds." The present 

 weight is about forty pounds. 2 This reduction of 

 forty pounds, or one half of the total weight, since 

 Dutchman's day, makes a great difference in time 

 for a mile, being probably equivalent on the average 

 to about one and a half seconds. 



1 In Delaware, perhaps in other States also, a kite track which 

 is down grade all the way has been constructed. This crowning 

 absurdity was accomplished by making the return side of the loop 

 end at a lower level than that from which the outgoing side of 

 the loop starts. 



'-' I have seen latelv in a Boston warehouse a skeleton wagon 

 that weighs but fifty pounds, and a top buggy that weighs only 

 one hundred and twenty-eight pounds. Nancy Hanks's sulky 

 weighs but thirty-eight pounds. Such vehicles might almost be 

 described as works of art. 



