INTRODUCTION. 21 



man to go straight to the record. It was a very short time 

 after the publication of the British Short-horn Herd-Book 

 till a pedigree, in order to go at all, had to contain the full 

 designation of every male animal named therein not only 

 the name, but the number also. The same was the fact in 

 this country ; and it will be but a short time till the num- 

 bers will be deemed indispensable in horse pedigrees, and 

 the more we use the system the more we will prize it. 



TROTTING SUPPLEMENT. 



If the " confusion" has been great among the thorough- 

 breds, it is " worse confounded " among the trotters. The 

 practice manifested itself early, and it has not yet disap- 

 peared, of waiting till a horse should distinguish himself on 

 the trotting turf, and then hunting up a pedigree for him. 

 Some of the more pretentious memoirs that have been writ- 

 ten of celebrated trotters were certainly not poetry, but 

 they might properly be classed with works of the imagina- 

 tion, so far as blood is concerned. But while many of these 

 pedigrees are somewhat problematical to use no stronger 

 term many of them, especially those of later day, are 

 entirely reliable ; and, in order that every man may be able 

 to make his own deductions from the blood and perform- 

 ances of the many celebrities, they are all here given, and 

 many others, not specially distinguished for speed, but 

 because they are more or less intimately connected with the 

 blood of our famous trotters. It is to be regretted that, in 

 our day, we have so few trotting races over a mile, as it is 

 " staying the distance" that most clearly demonstrates the 

 value of blood. This question of the value of blood in the 

 trotting horse has been discussed over and over again for 



