78 RACING BLOOD IN THE TROTTER. 



to the blood of the race-horse, or technical thoroughbred, for some- 

 thing' to reinvigorate, as it is styled, our trotters. Many, also, have 

 given years of labor and much money to the effort of making a trotter 

 from a thoroughbred by dint of education and practice. 



I will say here that, in my opinion, more is said and written, and 

 less understood — or, more accurately, more is said and written with an 

 imperfect understanding of the subject, on this matter of the resort 

 to the blood of the thoroughbred in the raising of trotting horses — 

 than on any to which my attention is often directed. Many have vague 

 and fanciful theories on the subject, but have not studied it in the 

 light of experience, or the history of the trotting turf. In my scra]-)- 

 book I find the following, from a clearly expressed article in one of the 

 leading journals of the past year: 



While we have extended and magnificent breeding studs scattered over the 

 country, each with a noble representative of some honored family of trotters 

 at its head, we have no thoroughbred trotting horse ; but we expect to see, in 

 the immediate future, a thoroughbred horse a trotter. 



It is to blood that we are indebted for our trotters ; to thoroughbred, royal 

 Hood. Notwithstanding the remarkably high standard to which the trotting 

 horse has been bred, the fact has been fully and frequently demonstrated that 

 the higMst types of the trotting horse can be materially improved by a direct 

 cross to the thoroughbred. 



I am tempted to digress here, so far as to controvert the last part of 

 the proposition above advanced, and to observe that this word, thor- 

 mighhred., has tAvo distinct meanings, as applied to horses. The one 

 in letter and technical theory, that, to make a horse thoroughbred, he 

 must have a certain number of crosses, all coming from the blood of 

 the pure-bred race-horse on both sides. This is the arithmetical, tech- 

 nical thoroughbred, no matter how worthless a weed he may be him- 

 self in blood and bone. There is another tlioroughhred horse in real- 

 ity, in all that pertains to greatness, in form or temper, blood, brain, 

 or bone — one that, by the flash of his lightning eye, and the grand 

 and sovereign test of performance, can demonstrate that he is truly 

 King — that none but royal blood courses in his veins — Smuggler or 

 Dexter — as magnificent specimens of the animal creation as Blair 

 Athol himself. 



But to recur to the proposition under consideration, whether the 

 blood of the racer is of any further avail in the progressive develop- 

 ment of a breed or type of American trotters in the present advanced 

 state of breeding in this country, and if so, in what way can it be suc- 

 cessfully applied? 



