CHAPTER XXIII 



GREAT PRODUCING MARES : GREEN MOUNTAIN MAID, 

 MISS RUSSELL, AND BEAUTIFUL BELLS 



THERE are over 4000 mares in the " Table of 

 Great Brood Mares," but less than 60 of these 

 have produced five or more with standard trot- 

 ting records. Severe critics like Robert Bonner, 

 Leland Stanford, Charles Backman, and Benjamin 

 F. Tracy regarded it as objectionable in a mare 

 to vary in the transmission of form and gait. 

 One of the select brood mares under the high- 

 est test is Green Mountain Maid. Others have 

 produced a greater average of speed, but there is 

 none whose blood has bred on with such deep 

 persistence. I regard her as the greatest of 

 matrons. Green Mountain Maid was a brown 

 mare of 15 hands, with star and white hind ankles, 

 foaled in 1862; bred by Samuel Conklin of Mid- 

 dletown, Orange County, New York, and got 

 by Harry Clay, 45 (son of Neaves's Cassius M. 

 Clay Jr.), dam Shanghai Mary, a bloodlike mare 

 of nervous temperament from Ohio and supposed 



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