84 EACING BLOOD IN THE TROTTER. 



If I am asked why, on principle, I select blood that has come 

 through a racing sire rather than a racing dam, I answer: that the 

 blood and mental traits or habits of a mare of a family type that has 

 been bred and used for ten or twenty generations for galloping, and 

 that alone, is of such fixed and obstinate character as to refuse to yield 

 to the impress of a sire lower than herself in qualit}^, or less fixed and 

 positive in his standard of blood. On the other hand, the part-bred 

 or low-bred mare does jield, and the offspring of such mare and the 

 thoroughbred sire affords a more pliant and yielding field on which to 

 engraft trotting tendencies. Reason and philosophy suggest that such 

 should be the rule, and actual results prove that this should be the 

 practice. 



In nearly every great trotter in the land, we have lines of blood 

 coming through or from some thoroughbred stallion; while of the 

 horses that can trot in 2 :25 or faster, not one runs back on the dam's 

 side to a thoroughbred mare; and, of the number that can trot in 

 2:30, few, if any, can show such a pedigree perfectly authentic. 



It is, however, by many held that certain lines of racing blood 

 possess special adaptation to the evolution or production of trotters, and 

 this claim is not limited to the families that have now and then been 

 distinguished by a trotter of great capabilities, coming outside of the 

 ranks of the well recognized trotting families, as Grafton, Jim Irving, 

 or Jennie. The two families now particularly claimed as having 

 great excellence in this particular, are those of Diomed and Trustee, 

 both imported horses, but very unlike in their blood qualities and 

 character. For a long period wx'iters on this subject have given great 

 celebritv to these two families: both alike distino-uished for their own 

 connection with or descent from the greatest turf performers of 

 Eno-land. Diomed was the first winner of the Derbv, and was 

 iraj^orted into this country when twenty-two years old, and his blood 

 enters into the earliest and most brilliant racing annals of this 

 country. 



While it is true that he was a very fleet race-horse and his descend- 

 ants have been greatly distinguished as running horses, it is not true 

 that they possessed one particle of trotting blood or any special fitness 

 for or adaptation to the production of a trotting famil3\ 



On the contrary, the tendency of the blood of Diomed is at all 

 times in a direction contrary to trotting excellence, and the trotting 

 quality of any family in-bred in that blood Avill constantly deteriorate 

 when sires are employed that represent a large quantum of the blood 

 of Diomed. 



