i86 THE HORSE 



and secondly, the proper individuals, one could easily 

 produce ideal roadsters, coach horses, light-weight 

 farm horses, and saddle horses. 



ORIGIN OF THE TROTTER 



All breeds and families trace back to some great sire 

 who has the capacity, most rare of all capacities, to 

 transmit his own good qualities from generation to 

 generation.^ The founder of the American trotting 

 family is Rysdyk's Hambletonian. He was a horse of 

 peculiar breeding, and about half thoroughbred. His 

 sire was Abdallah by Mambrino, a son of Messenger. 

 Messenger, a gray thoroughbred, was foaled at New- 

 market in England in 1780, and imported to this coun- 

 try in 1788. Being a tough, powerful horse, with a 

 natural trotting gait (notwithstanding his breeding), 

 he became the sire of many valuable harness horses, 

 although as a sire of runners he was rather a failure. 



Messenger was a horse of great vitality. He had a 

 stormy passage from England, and one who saw him 

 taken off the ship relates that three other horses, his 

 companions on the long voyage — 



had become so reduced and weak that they had to be helped 

 and supported down the gang-plank; but when it became 

 Messenger's turn to land, he, with a loud neigh, rushed down, 

 with a negro on each side holding him back, and dashed up the 

 street at a stiff trot, carrying the grooms along in spite of all 

 their efforts to bring him to a standstill. 



^ We see the same thing occasionally m the human race, as, for 

 example, in the family founded by John Adams, second President of 

 the United States. 



