Couriers of the Air. 83 



continued. " Firetail " ran a mile in one minute 

 and four seconds; and the famous " Eclipse " is 

 said to have gone at the rate of a mile in a minute 

 for a short distance. But it is difficult to form 

 any exact estimate of his speed, as he never met 

 with an opponent to put him to the test. During 

 one of his trials, an old woman, according to Youatt, 

 was asked if she had seen a race. Her reply was 

 that " she could not tell whether it was a race or 

 not, but she had seen a horse with a white leg 

 running away at a monstrous rate, and another 

 horse, a great way behind, trying to run after 

 him ; but she was sure he would never catch the 

 white-legged horse, even if he ran to the world's 

 end." The above records refer of course to 

 horses galloping ; but trotting, which is more or 

 less an artificial mode of horse progression, has, 

 with regard to speed, almost been reduced to 

 an art. For facts concerning it we must look 

 mainly to America, and perhaps no records are 

 more interesting than those of the famous trotting 

 mare " Maud S." On September ist, 1884, 

 Maud ran a mile over the Hartford track in two 

 minutes twenty-eight seconds ; and every fourth 

 day she trotted over the same distance, the first 

 being the slowest, and the fourth the fastest 

 two minutes twenty seconds. At the end of 

 eight days her training consisted of trotting 

 over two or three mile journeys, with the result 

 that the time was brought down to two minutes 



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