SELECTIONS IN BREEDING. 29 



ting sire, it will be also seen that the question of sex greatly affects 

 the subject, and as relating to this matter o£ blood forces, as affected 

 by sex, many illustrations will be given. 



Another important fact should also be kept in mind as one of 

 the incidents to this matter of breeding, which might be said to 

 amount to a law or rule, if its limits and operations could at all times 

 be defined or even understood. Its effects are often seen, and this 

 fact is sometimes only kno^ATi by its visible results, Avhen the causes 

 or principles from which it springs can not clearly be traced. It is 

 what is termed niching^ or the readiness "with which certain strains of 

 blood unite and produce valuable results; or the certainty with which 

 certain crosses almost invariably either succeed or fail. This is an 

 incident of breeding in all its departments. 



In the breeding of trotters there often occurs what may justly be 

 termed a phenomenon — apparent in its results, but often difficult to 

 account for in principle^ — the case where, in a union of two families of 

 known and positive trotting qualities, the produce totally fails in that 

 one particular in which the sire and dam both excel. The case is 

 similar to that of two powerful acids or chemicals that, separately, 

 prove destructive to many material substances with which they may 

 come in contact, but united, the joint j^roduct is totally harmless — the 

 one entirely neutralizing the other, and thvis two very powerful agents, 

 by a union, forming an inert and worthless substance. Such is often 

 the ease in breeding trotters from families of fixed type, each having 

 in themselves fixed and valuable characteristics. 



The case of the Bellfovmder and Abdallah blood in some respects 

 furnishes an illustration of this fact, although this may strike some of 

 my readers as a rather rash announcement. Hambletonian himself, 

 great as he deservedly stands, and will continue to stand, in a fame 

 and a reputation that eclipses all others, contemporary or anterior, was 

 limited in the range of his successes, beyond doubt, by the very com- 

 bination of that Bellfounder and Abdallah blood which made him 

 great. The union of these two elements operated to withhold his 

 great excellence in many instances, owing to the fitness of the compo- 

 nent parts for the particular cross not l^eing then, and 2:)erhaps not 

 now, understood — the one refusing to impart its own or to receive the 

 good qualities of the other. In tliis respect, there is no doubt that the 

 Bellfovmder blood, as has been charged, did often Avork against the 

 blood of Abdallah. And this was further exemplified in the immedi- 

 ate crossing of Hambletonian with mares of Bellfounder blood; in 



