ROAD HORSES. 123 



fast trotting, which is best performed by a peculiar 

 and very graceful round motion of the fore legs. Some 

 fast trotters have positively high action in front, — so 

 high as to seem like a waste of power. This is es- 

 pecially true of Allerton, a Wilkes-Mambrino Patchen 

 stallion whose record is 2.09J. This excessive action 

 is also found in some Morgan strains, especially 

 among Sherman Morgan's descendants. 



Country doctors are great adherents of the Morgan 

 horse. " The Morgan," writes one of this class, " will 

 trot all day, except when ascending a hill. As he ap- 

 proaches it, he will raise his head higher and higher. 

 First, one pointed ear, then the other, will snap back- 

 ward, then forward, as if he were asking permission 

 to gallop ; and then, if the driver does not object, 

 he will lay both ears flat to his head and skim the rise 

 like a bird, always striking into the same tireless 

 trot when he reaches the summit." 



It was from a country doctor — and I trust a vera- 

 cious one, for he was my grandfather — that I heard, 

 long years ago, the following story. He was driving 

 late one very dark night in autumn over a strange 

 road. A violent rain had fallen during the preceding 

 twenty-four hours, so that the highway was badly 

 washed. Presently his horse, a Vermont Morgan, 

 made a leap, and crashed through what seemed to be 

 the upper branches of a tree, taking the gig after him 

 very neatly. This was a little unusual, but still no 

 harm had been done. Half a mile or so farther on. 

 the horse made another jump : then came a crash and 

 a shiver as before, and the gig reeled over another 

 tree, as it appeared, poised for a moment on one 

 wheel, and righted itself as the horse resumed his 

 trot. 



