120 THE PERFECT HORSE. 



compete for prizes among colts of the wide-going, Morrill 

 action. But when these little trappy, quick-stepping fel- 

 lows are grown up, and happen to be called Dauntless 

 or Ned Wallace, the backers of the Morrill and Tom Jef- 

 ferson stock find that they have trotting-action enough 

 to get them round to the wire about two lengths quicker 

 than it was for their interest to have them get home. I 

 must confess to a growing dislike to this excessive wide 

 action of the hind-feet: it may impress the crowd, and 

 secure purchasers from that large number of people who 

 never reason upon any thing, but who buy a horse, as 

 the drunken sailor bought his ladder, " because it was so 

 well ventilated ; " but to me it argues weakness or faulty 

 construction where both are fatal to the highest form of 

 success. While, therefore, I would breed to no stallion 

 who had not a trotting-gait, I should not be especially 

 attracted to one noted for " wide action " as the phrase 

 is ; and if this width of action is associated, as is often 

 the case, with slowness of gather, — that is, if his hind- 

 feet went very wide apart, and staid under the sidhj a 

 good while, — I would not breed to him anyway. This 

 tardiness of gathering is a bad feature in a horse : a slow- 

 gathering horse will never trot fast, no matter how open 

 his gait, or how long his stride. I have seen horses stride 

 a distance of seventeen feet when they were not trotting 

 better than a 2.50 gait. These slow-gathering horses 

 are generally long-backed horses ; and horses with long 

 backs, unless splendidly developed over the loins, are 

 apt to gather slowly. The power to bring their feet up 



