50 THE BREEDING PROBLEM. 



Hence, when an animal has acquired, from long and constant use, the 

 nerve impulses and temperament of a roadster, full of intelligent 

 appreciation of the duties and displays of power incident to such 

 employment, it is but reasonable that such qualities would be trans- 

 mitted to the offspring of such animal, produced when such habits of 

 muscle and nerve were in full force and exercise, and that the force 

 and certainty with which the same would be transmitted would in 

 large part depend on the vital presence and force of such impulses. 

 Experience and observation both combine to teach the truth of these 

 principles. As we shall see further along, the great roadsters, and the 

 great trotters also, have come from parents that had been similarly 

 employed, and had a development that gave them fixed habits of 

 nerve and body — a temperament adapted to and coming from the 

 employment to which they had been devoted. 



It is important to note the fact that, while we recognize the blood 

 of Messenger as the great trotting blood of our country, this trotting 

 quality has come to us mainly, if not altogether, from the sons and 

 daughters of Messenger that were either part bred or kept and bred 

 from in localities where the horse was used as a roadster; and that, of 

 his thoroughbred sons and daughters used for racing purposes, for 

 which they were also distinguished, a much smaller percentage of 

 trotting qualities has been disseminated. This will be referred to 

 more fully in another place. 



Carrying out the supposed teachings of experience in this same mat- 

 ter, it is also claimed that to produce great trotters with certainty and 

 success, the parents must both be trained and developed in the way 

 that our great trotters are trained, and that as a sequence of this 

 doctrine such animals alone can be relied upon for the highest degree 

 of success as breeding animals. Whether it is true that this high, 

 degree of development in sire and dam is beneficial or can be relied 

 on with increased confidence, is a matter of uncertainty, and also 

 one of some difficulty to determine with any degree of satisfaction. 

 Whether the process of training and fitting which we call the grand 

 preparation for the great struggles of the race-course, do tend to give 

 the nervous and physical organism the same degree of fixed character 

 and constitute such traits into the permanent elements of the animal 

 nature and being as the regular and constant use as a roadster and 

 fast trotter in daily road work, we can hardly decide. Theory and 

 practice might not agree — the doctrine started with, may not corre- 

 spond to the results of experience. There may be many reasons why 



