THE HORSE HISTORY. 511 



less cost than now does the mongrel buggy nag, and the rattling 

 road-cart. 



The manufacturers of vehicles and the breeders of the trot- 

 ting-horse have introduced a fashion of buggy riding which has 

 captivated the young men on the farm, and has robbed the coun- 

 try of the grand race of useful horses under the saddle, ami 

 saddled on to the farmer an expense for vehicles greater than 

 the horse stock of the farm. 



To be sure, the model saddle-horse should never be used for 

 other work. The same is true of the model driver. But the 

 fanner's horse can be both, and do well the work of the farm, 

 too. Even the Clydes and Cleveland Bays, Low tells us, have 

 been found with so open and easy gait as to have led to their 

 purchase for saddle-horses. It is not retrograding to hold fast 

 to that which is good. It is wisdom not to let go of a good 

 thing in mad haste to try a novelty. The writer is by no means 

 wanting in admiration of the noble American trotter, but he 

 thinks the trotter as now bred is not the farmer's horse. He 

 lacks, first of all, the habit of slow, steady going, and is too 

 impatient under restraint. The true trotter loves to go, and his 

 ancestors have been bred for speed and rapid motion, and not 

 for quiet, patient toil, as the plow and wagon horse must needs 

 adapt himself to. 



The Trotting-horse. The trotting-horse is the product 

 of modern times. He did not have his origin in the pursuits 

 of war and of ceremony, as did the Arab and Barb, and their 

 lineal descendant, the Andalusian, and the heavy chargers of 

 the Norman type. The trotting-horse originates in an age when 

 men's thoughts are not mainly on war and pomp, but upon 

 trade and commerce. He is the product of a business age. 



Americans have done most to develop the race of trotters, 

 and we hear horsemen that know more of horse than history 

 assert that the trotting-horse originated in America, and that 

 here horses were first trained to trot. While it is true the 

 Europeans and English have done little in developing the trot- 

 ting instinct and training in that gait, they began to have tes^s 

 of speed in that gait before it was done in America. 



