168 CYCLOPEDIA OF LIVE STOCK AND COMPLKTE STOCK DOCTOR. 



II. Progenitors of Past Trotters. 

 Notable among tlie horses that have made wonderful records in trot- 

 ting of late years are those descended from, and partaking largely of the 

 blood of, Messenger, Bellfounder and of Hambletonian. Hambletonian, 

 after a career of varied success as a racer, at length became distinguished 

 as a getter of trotting horses of elegance, finish, speed and endur- 

 ance, either under the saddle or in harness. It is not our purpose to go 

 minutely into the record of noted performances ou the Amei-ican trotting 

 turf. Nowhere else in the world is the fondness for exhibitions of 

 speed in trotting, so nearly universal among the people, as it has become 

 here ; and in no other country are such exhibitions so patronized by every 

 class. Even in Russia, the home of the famous Orloff breed, this sport 

 is by no means a national one. WTiere the general reader is usually so 

 well informed of current events, the familiar details of exploits upon 

 the turf are deemed to contain far less interest than will be found in a 

 brief account of some of the most celebrated sires, whose descendants 

 have proved constant in their performances. 



Messenger. — The original source of our best blood. Imported Mes- 

 senger, not only gained fame for himself, but bequeathed his excellen- 

 ces to a long line of descendants, who have been famous in the annals of 

 the turf. His own ancestry possessed character for great and peculiar 

 merit. Foaled in 1780, his first sire was Mambrino ; second sire, En- 

 gineer ; third sire, Sampson ; fourth sire. Blaze ; fifth sire, Fljdng Childers ; 

 sixth sire. The Darley Arabian. On the female side, his dam was by 

 Turf ; second dam, the sister of Figurante, was by Regulas ; third dam 

 by Bolton Starling; fourth dam, Snaps by Fox; fifth dam, Gipsey by 

 Bay Bolton , and so on through Ne^A castle Turk, Brierly Turk, Taffolet 

 Barb, to the ninth dam by Place's White Turk, out of a natural Barb mare. 

 Messenger was threfore in-bred to a considerable degree, and combined 

 in his veins the purest and richest blood of early English race horses. 



Potency of Arabian Blood. — Godolphin Arabian appears three times 

 m the pedigi-ee of ]\Iessenger. Flying Childers was the phenomenon of 

 the English turf in his day, and the accounts of his performances appear 

 almost fabulous. Of one of the progenitors of ISIessenger, Sampson, it 

 is said that while the thoroughbred of his day was scarcely more than 

 fourteen and a half hands high, rarely reaching fifteen, Sampson was fifteen 

 hands two inches, and was reported to be the largest-boned blood horse 

 then ever bred. Horses of the Sampson blood, as we knew it nearly 

 forty years ago, were wonderfully compact animals of great bone, muscle 

 and sinew. Sampson, Engineer and Mambrino were all rough and coarse, 

 and the last two were considered the strongest and heaviest-boned horses 



