A SHORT HISTOEY 



AMEEICAN TEOTTmG HOESE. 



America naturally inherits tliat love for the horse and rural 

 life which distinguishes the mother country ; but with us the 

 trotter holds the first place in the popular estimation, while the 

 running turf is patronized mainly by the wealthiest portion of the 

 community. Indeed, we may justly claim the trotting horse as an 

 American production; for though this gait is natural to the horse, 

 and trotting matches have occasionally taken place in England and 

 France, and though in Kussia the efforts of the famous Count Orloff 

 have resulted in establishing a breed of trotting horses which have 

 fine action and some speed, it is only in this country that the trot- 

 ting gait has been brought to perfection. 



The advocates of the" Darwinian theory can reasonably point to 

 the trotting horse as an illustration of the doctrine of evolution; 

 for though he is not a distinct breed or strain of horses, or de- 

 scended from any one family, he is certainly a wonderful instance 

 of what may be done by cultivating certain gaits or peculiarities, and 

 by a careful selection of only the best animals for breeding purposes. 

 His very existence in this country hardly dates back of the present 

 century, as in the early periods of our history all the imported 

 horses were used exclusively for running purposes, and the ante- 

 revolutionary races were all of that character. At first, as in all 

 new countries, the roads were very rough and stony — poor at all 

 times, and in bad weather utterly impassable for light carriages ; 

 the distances between settlements were often long and the roads 

 lonesome, and the saddle horse was the only medium of communi- 

 cation, excepting when the heavy, lumbering stages jolted slowly 

 along the few turnpike roads running between the largest towns. 

 The old weather-beaten stone steps still remaining at the gateway 

 of many old-fashioned country houses, although now unused and 

 mossy, testify to the equestrian habits of the colonial era, when the 

 saddle horse was used by both sexes. 



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