IMPORTED MESSEISTGER. 113: 



horses that could trot a mile in three minutes and could trot seventeen 

 miles within the hour — a race whose trotting instincts are not sur- 

 passed by any that we have in our own country at this day — we need 

 have no difficulty in ascertaining the origin of the animal that possessed 

 the qualities exhibited in the horse under consideration. While the 

 thoroughbred was mainly bred from the blood of the desert, the 

 English hunter and English hackney were doubtless very superior 

 horses. The great weights carried across hedges, walls and ditches,, 

 and across a wide expanse of country, in the fox chase, could only be- 

 done by animals of great ability. 



The sire of Sampson was not a low or ill-bred animal, although not 

 a grandson of the Darley Arabian. Besides the matter of color — 

 black being the prevailing color in that part of England for the road 

 or coach horse — the family of Sampson have one other point that 

 marks them indelibly as having a trace of the blood of the black 

 Lincolnshire horse, namely, the flat or round and low wdthers. This is. 

 a peculiarity of the Messenger horse of to-day in the highest and best 

 form. Put your hand on the withers of Blackwood, one of his finest 

 representatives living, and you see in the low, round, almost flat 

 withers, the united effect of several close and direct crosses of Messen- 

 ger blood. 



H. "VY. Herbert, the accomplished writer on the English horse, says 

 of the colors of the coach horses descended from the Suffolk Punch,. 

 Lincolnshire horse and Cleveland bays crossed for many generations 

 with the blood of thoroughbreds and the best English stallions, that they 

 are often found dark browns with cinnamon muzzles; which is a favor- 

 ite color, being supposed to indicate hardiness. Did this color, which 

 is so common in the descendants of Hambletonian, ever suggest itself 

 to any of my readers as an evidence of coach- horse descent? 



Mr. Herbert is sufficient authority for the statement that the pure 

 original races of Lincolnshire, Cleveland bay and Suffolk Punch 

 horses have almost disappeared in England, from the custom that has 

 now prevailed for over a century, of crossing the thoroughbred 

 stallions on this stock, and recrossing the same class of stallions suc- 

 cessively on the produce thus obtained; that by such means a race 

 of black coach horses has been produced, in every way one of great 

 superiority. 



That the sire of Sampson was one thus descended from the Black 

 Lincolnshire horse, in the remote past, admits of hardly a doubt. His 

 low and straight shoulder, his flat or round withers, his color, and his 



