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MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



until he is eight or nine years old. The Abdal- 

 lahs, great-grandsous of old Mcssengei', trot much 

 younger ; Hiram \V"oodniff — and there can be 

 no better authority — would commence a horse's 

 training for the trot at five or six j^ears of age, 

 giving him light work, ho^vever, but going on 

 increasing his work from year to year, and ex- 

 pecting increasing excellence up to nine or ten 

 years, and with kind usage he might continue 

 up to this mark for three or four j-ears longer, 

 and they often last to perform admirably until 

 after twenty — for example : Columbus, Paul 

 Pry, Topgallant, &c. 



The stoutest horses, of whatever kind or de- 

 gree of blood, might be expected to give way if 

 put at three or four, as the race-horse is, into se- 

 vere training under heavy weights, for trotting- 

 stakes or the chase ; but on the other hand, with- 

 out blood to give him wind and courage, what 

 •would avail his •' bag of bones," in a trial to trot 

 his hundred miles m ten hours? Johnson, au- 

 thor of the Sportsman's Cyclopedia — justly es- 

 teemed high authority on such subjects — ^re- 

 marks that " thorough-bred horses, and particu- 

 larly those of the best blood, are seldom pos- 

 sessed of suflBcient bone to render them pre- 

 eminently calculated for the chase ; yet I am 

 free to confess that the very best hunters that 

 have fallen under my observation have been 

 remarkably well and very highly bred, but yet 

 not absolutely thorough-bred." The same re- 

 mark, it is not doubted, might be made as gene- 

 rally applicable to our first-rate trotters, at long 

 distances. The case of Abdallah and Messenger 

 has been instanced to show that great trotters, 

 not thorough-bred, may and do hegct trotters; 

 and hence some would argue that a distinct race 

 of horses may or does e.xist. But it is to be re- 

 membered that both Abdallah and Messenger 

 are sons of Mambrino, son of old Messenger, 

 and of Messenger mares, though not thorough- 

 bred ; and nothing is better known by all who 

 have been in the habit of attending to these sub- 

 jects, than that the Messenger family is distin- 

 guished for making first-rate coach-horses — 

 quick in ligiit harness, and remarkable for endu- 

 rance and long life. That Abdallah, therefore, 

 himself deep in the Messenger blood, should be 

 himself a trotter and a getter of trotters, only 

 proves that like begets like ; and that of a dis- 

 tinct breed, like the thorough-bred horse, cha- 

 racterized by the possession of general proper- 

 ties belonging only to and constituting that 

 breed, there may hs particular families distin- 

 guished for some peculiar qualities not possessed 

 in the same degree by other families of the same 

 breed. Thus we have the three classes of the 

 English thorough-bred stock, to wit : the Herod, 

 the Matchem, and the Eclipse, that have sei-ved 

 as crosses for each other. In like manner, it 

 may be said of the improved short-horn cattle — 

 (1T8) 



their general characteristic is early maturity and 

 propensity to fat, without being generally re- 

 markable as deep milkers, though tliere are 

 families of the short-horns esteemed for that 

 quality. A dash of the blood of old Messenger 

 imparts high form and action for the State coach, 

 and the eye of the connoisseur can detect the 

 signs in a horse in ^\•hose veins flow even one- 

 eighth of his blood ; so the fact is generally 

 known lo old gentlemen in the South, and espe- 

 ciallj' avouched by the Sporting and Agricultu- 

 ral Society in South Carolina, that the stock of 

 old Janus (there called Genius) was so remark- 

 able as road and saddle horses, as to have got- 

 ten to be considered a distinct breed ; so the 

 Topgallant stock made fine saddle-horses, excel- 

 ling in the canter. The blood horse, too, is re- 

 markable for longevitj' — the Messenger stock 

 particularly so. If the truth could be known, it 

 is probable it flowed in larger or smaller streams 

 m each of the four thoroughbreds which the 

 late General Hampton (sire of that paragon of 

 sport.smen and gentlemen, Col. Wade Hamp- 

 ton) drove in his coach all together for sixteen 

 years. 



While it has been found impracticable to ob- 

 tain any precise infonnation as to the pedigree 

 of some of our very best trotters, in other cases 

 where more is known, they are found to 

 be deep in the blood. — Awful, whose peiform- 

 ances will be seen in the tables annexed, is 

 known to have been gotten by a thorough-bred 

 " American bo}\" Abdallah, as before men- 

 tioned, is by Mambrino, and he again, a great 

 trotter, by Messenger ; but Dutchman, one of 

 our best trotters, has no known pedigree, though 

 we have some reason to think he was by Young 

 Oscar, then at Carlisle. He was taken out of a 

 clay -yard, and was transferred to the trotting- 

 turf from a Pennsylvania wagon-team. Wood- 

 ruff thinks blood does not give them length, or 

 the power to go the long distances; but in this 

 it is believed he must be mistaken. These Ca- 

 nadian or Nonuan-French stallions, small and 

 compact, which on well-formed, large mares 

 give such fine harness-horses and trotters, are, 

 as before said, deeply imbued with the blood of 

 the barb taken from Spain into Normandy. We 

 have been told lately by an intelligent English- 

 man, that the infusion of blood into their coach- 

 hor.ses has enabled them to lengthen their stages, 

 and in very observable proportion to the degree 

 of blood. Finally, as where the blood of the 

 trotter when known, is seen to flow in so many 

 instances from a spring of pure blood, is it not 

 fair to infer a similar origin in cases where the 

 blood cannot be traced ? especially as the uni- 

 versal experience of all times proves that in 

 other paces, the cases have been extremely rare, 

 in which a horse of impure blood has been 

 known to kerp vp a great fligh t of speed 1 A 



