OEIGIN OF THE PACEES. 93 



incline him to select or prefer that way of going. In my boyhood 

 I taught several saddle horses to pace, having lived in a country where 

 the saddle horse was much used and the pacing gait was preferred 

 to other ways of going. 



It is apparent that the origin and process of development of the 

 pacing families are identical with or more literally analogous to that of 

 the trotters. Instead of starting with the Morgan, the Messenger and 

 the Bellfounder families — as the trotters have, in large part, in the 

 Northern and Eastern parts of this country, where the custom of the 

 the people was to drive rather than ride on horseback — they seem 

 about in equal proportion to have come from Canadians and from 

 families descended from and by kinship allied to the thoroughbred, a 

 very large proportion indeed running back to imp. Diomed — this latter 

 fact, however, may result from the fact that so large a share of our 

 thoroughbred and saddle stock of the Southern States are descended 

 from or connected with that horse — rather than from any original 

 adaptation in particular for saddle purposes. They seem to have 

 been gradually developed — as in the case of the trotters — by the cus- 

 tom of the country to use the saddle more than the carriage horse, and 

 to resort to the blood of the race-horse for the elevation and improve- 

 ment of the saddle stock of the country. As successive generations 

 passed away with successive resorts to the blood of the racer, whose 

 blood was best adapted to the easy saddle gait, and at the same time 

 crossing such upon the Canadian stock, and other mares best suited 

 to that way of going, the process of development advanced in a path 

 precisely analogous to that pursued in the other section of the coun- 

 try in the development of the trotter. Thus also kinship in their 

 common ancestry of racing blood renders it in many cases an easy task 

 to convert the pacer into a trotter and even increase his speed; and 

 so far as we have had sufficient experience to engraft a trotting upon 

 an original pacing element, pacing stallions with great uniformity pro- 

 duce trotting offspring. 



This pacing gait is obviously more akin to the trotting gait than the 

 gallop, and hence it is not a difficult matter in many cases to convert 

 the pacer into the trotter; and for the like reason the true and natural 

 pacer, vdth his even and steady gait, one side at a time, makes a 

 more steady and rehable trotter than the single footer or racker. The 

 motion of the trotter is a diagonal one — but two feet move and strike 

 the ground at the same time, but on opposite sides — whereas in the 

 pacer it is a lateral motion, one side at a time, but both feet on that side 



