28 THE BEEEDING PROBLEM. 



unto excellence as trotting sires, have a capacity for long-continued 

 training and a high degree of advancement; hence the two great 

 requisites in a family are, first, the natural and ready trotting gait; 

 and, secondly, the lasting and improving capacity. While a trotter 

 and his dam may possess originally only the latter, the sire, if really a 

 great one, should have, by right of inheritance, both. He will not 

 transmit with certainty that which he does not derive from his blood. 



Moreover, it has been also ascertained that some of the most valua- 

 ble qualities of the trotter are transmitted by either sex with varying 

 degrees of success in different families — in some excelling, and in. 

 some failing, in the male line, and in others exactly the reverse. In 

 some of these cases the fact has only been established by repeated ex- 

 perience, and can with difficulty be traced to any satisfactory cause ; in 

 others, it is the result of well-known and clearly-understood principles.. 

 This fact very greatly affects the value of a stallion. The most 

 notable example of this has been the case of the American Star 

 mares. These were, many of them, superior trotters — as fast as the 

 thirties themselves — and as the dams of great ones, from Hamble- 

 tonian as the sire, their fame is as imperishal^le as his own, while that 

 of the sons is so far eclipsed as to leave their names in comparative 

 obscurity. 



We shall, as we advance further into our subject, find the true 

 philosophy of the fact last stated to be in that quality of the Duroc 

 blood and conformation, which on the female side yields to the trot- 

 ting qualities of the Messenger sire, but when the sex is reversed 

 runs back in its tendency toward the blood of Diomed, which was. 

 totally lacking in trotting quality. 



It has been claimed, that of the offspring of Imported Glencoe, the 

 chief value for breeding puq^oses was in the daughters, and in the 

 case of Hambletonian it has gained some currency that the breeding 

 excellence is only on the male side — but of this more hereafter. The 

 stallions Almont, Administrator, Blackwood and Swigert have assumed 

 great prominence as trotting sires, and it begins to attract some atten- 

 tion that their dams were by Mambrino Chief, and also that the most 

 signal success of the former has been with mares by the same sire; and 

 gradually the opinion is gaining ground, that the fame of the Mambrino 

 Chief blood is yet to rest in the superiority of the female side as the 

 dams of trotters and trotting sires — but of this more hereafter. 



When I come to treat of the value of racing blood, or that of the 

 thoroughbred, as infused or to be infused into the trotter or the trot- 



