AGRICULTURE AND THE HORSE. 373 



unhiown dam, we have Mambrino Chief, dam also 

 unhioion, though said to be of Messenger descent; 

 and from Mambrino Chief we have Lady Thorn and 

 Mambrino Pilot and Mambrino Patchen and Ericsson 

 and Brignoli and Ashland, in whose pedigrees will be 

 found as many unhiown dams as there are sires , and 

 grandsires. And as I trace the blood of the old horse 

 into Maine and Vermont, where all the mares were 

 "unknown," what a tribe of our earliest and best 

 trotters rises before my vision ! — Ripton, the gallant 

 "white-legged pony," the favorite of Hiram Wood- 

 ruff, the resolute and plucky and triumphant, rival- 

 ling Dutchman as a three-miler, and defeating Lady 

 Suffolk, an eastern horse, undoubtedly of Messenger 

 and Morgan blood ; and Daniel D. Tompkins, a 

 wonderful little horse ; and Gen. Taylor, " a very 

 famous trotter and sticker ; " and Independence, the 

 delight of my boyhood ; and Fanny Pullen, the dam 

 of Trustee, the twenty-miler ; and Shepherd Knapp; 

 and Mac; and True John; and Green-Mountain Maid; 

 and Gray Vermont; and Sontag; and Ethan Allen 

 (dam, a Messenger mare), the best balanced horse 

 ever seen on an American track, the evenest-gaited 

 horse from the walk onward ever bred, and the most 

 striking illustration of the enervating influence of 

 high feed and rapid work in early life ever known in 

 horse annals. These horses, far removed from the 

 original thorough-bred, and fortunate in the strain of 

 blood which they do possess, springing from families 



