164 AMERICAN THOROUGH-BREDS 



claim pre-eminence for its effect upon the horse. There is 

 nothing in breeding to parallel our reducing trotting speed 

 from 2.26^ by "Lady Suffolk" — which many men still 

 remember to have seen — down to " Nancy Hanks's " 2.05 

 in 1892. Nor need we feel like taking a back seat in 

 racing. We have had altogether too much good-luck, even 

 by our second-raters, on English turf, to feel discouraged, 

 and our records are of the very best. So good an author- 

 ity as Count Lehndorf, in his Horse -Breeding Recollec- 

 tions^ says : 



"Experience points to America as the source from 

 which to draw in future the regenerating fluid, for, al- 

 though the American thorough-bred takes its origin from 

 England, and is still more or less related to its English 

 prototype, the exterior appearance and the more recently 

 shown superiority of American horses lead to the conclu- 

 sion that the evidently favorable climate, and the, to a 

 great extent, virgin soil of America — in every respect dif- 

 ferent from ours — gradually restore the whole nature of 

 the horse to its pristine vigor, and make the American 

 racer appear eminently qualified to exercise an invigo- 

 rating influence on the condition of the thorough-breds of 

 the mother- country, enfeebled, perhaps, by oft-repeated 

 inbreeding." 



This is from a source entirely impartial, and one often 

 quoted in England. 



