OKIGIN OF TROTTIISTG INSTINCT. 57 



a road horse, has been the nursery in which was reared the embrvo 

 trotter, that now so greatly distinguishes our American turf. And it 

 is instructive and highly useful in this connection to observe the 

 influence of this school of experience on the part of the maternal 

 ancestry of our trotting families. It is often said that we derive our 

 greatest and best qualities fi-om our mothers. It certainly has been 

 the case with the progress and development of our great trotting 

 families. 



Amazonia was long and severely disciplined as a road mare. She 

 thus acquired qualities which she imparted to Abdallah that are trans- 

 mitted with a force not exhibited by any other son of Mambrino. It 

 was the same school in which the dam of Hambletonian developed 

 those qualities which mark so large a branch of our trotting family. 

 The same may be said of the dam of Alexander's Abdallah, and the 

 granddam of Volunteer and Sentinel; the dam of Lady Thorn, of 

 Argonaut, of Daniel Lambert, of Happy Medium, of Aberdeen, of 

 Ericsson, and manv others of our noted trottino" sires. 



It may in this connection be worthy of note, that those mares that 

 have been distinguished as superior road mares rather than as turf 

 celebrities, have generally had the most signal influence on our trot- 

 ting families as the dams of celebrated stallions. 



Mental traits which are of a deep and lasting character are not 

 acqviired at once and spontaneously, but are the gro^vth of long and 

 continued usage and discipline. It is thus they become a jDart of the 

 spirit or mind of the animal. By disuse they are lost or weakened. 

 Hence it results that trotting blood, in remote and diluted channels, 

 may not always prove a guaranty of success in breeding. But when 

 an animal of enduring excellence is found that has a pedigree rich in 

 the blood of our most noted trotting families, and when all the partic- 

 ular members through which it comes have been noted for supei'iority, 

 such an one carries a guaranty of great reproducing power. Like 

 having successively reproduced like^ may be relied upon to continue 

 in the same channel. 



The matter of temperament is nearly akin to that of trotting 

 instinct, but is not identical with it. Many animals have the trotting 

 inclination highly developed and deeply implanted, but are so hot- 

 headed as to make them trot one day and be utterly intractable on 

 another. Longfellow was a horse of a remarkably cool temperament, 

 but he possessed no trotting instinct beyond that of any other race- 

 horse. I once owned a mare by imp. Mango, winner of the Doncaster 



