MYSTERY DISSOLVING. 103 



pushing the pacer before it, till we find him only in a new country, surrounded 

 with the same conditions in which his early history first began to develop on 

 this continent. There he is still found carrying his master over bad roads and 

 bridgeless streams in comfort and safety. 



It is not necessary to again call attention to the truths of the laws of heredity 

 in habits of action as well as in other characteristics, as that topic has already 

 been treated exhaustively in preceding chapters. 



From the facts given above, we can hardly err in the conclusion that from, 

 say, the middle of the last century till the opening of the Revolution, the 

 dominant pacing blood was the blood of the Narragansett. It then follows 

 that the blood that was pushed back into the woods, and there kept repro- 

 ducing itself, was Narragansett blood. If this were so in the first fifty miles 

 of improvement, it would be so in five hundred ; and if it were so for a single 

 generation, it would be so in all succeeding ones. According to this method 

 of reasoning, therefore — and we can see nothing unfair in it — wherever the 

 pacer is found, the presumption is, he inherits his habits of action from his 

 Narragansett ancestor. As already intimated, this conclusion does not rest 

 upon statistics or records, which are the safest of all data, but upon reasonable 

 deductions from a few known facts. 



The author further proceeds to argue that the so-called Canadian 

 pacer is a myth, that Pilot and all the known pacers which have 

 assumed a position in the trotting pedigrees came from this same 

 Narragansett stock. 



If I am forced to adopt either of these opinions relating to the 

 origin of our great pacers of the present day, I confess I feel like 

 taking my choice, and this will be, that if our pacers did not come from 

 the steed that was seen in mid-ocean, ambling one side at a time, (foi 

 admitting that he reached the shore, the prepotency of the race is 

 established) he did originate and still continues to appear on our own 

 soil, as circumstances and surroundings give occasion for adopting his 

 "way of going. 



The account given for the loss and disappearance of the Narragan- 

 setts, is equally mythical — that they were so highly prized in Cuba, 

 Virginia and elsewhere, that the demand exhausted the supply. This 

 does not do full credit to the usual sagacity and foresight of our 

 Yankee forefathers. The learned author, however, does suggest some 

 things, which, to my mind, relieve the subject of much of the appar- 

 ent mystery in which we would suppose he found it. He says : 



We find the pacer has vanished, not only from the little State of Rhode 

 Island, but from all the States on the Atlantic seaboard. Occasionally one 

 comes to light in this region, but the rule is, there are none; and when an 

 exceptional case appears, it can be traced to a border origin. The same 

 effects have been produced in England, and in even a more complete 



