IMPORTED MESSENGER, 121 



thev are not natural trotters, that their quaUty seems rather to be a 

 capacity to learn — an adaptation or aptitude for the trotting gait. But 

 in reality it is both. The trotting gait is their innate habit or inclina- 

 tion ; it is their instinct and their special adaptation, and their readi- 

 ness to improve and the great capacity they have for improvement, 

 and the great age to which they can improve and exhibit great power, 

 are simply the results of the inborn superiority of their blood. 



It is a blood that fuses or harmonizes well with all other trotting 

 bloods, but its natural superiority is such that it exercises a powerful 

 and controlling influence over other bloods to a marked degree; not, 

 indeed, that all other crosses yield to the Messenger in the peculiarities 

 that distinguish their own families. Not by any means. As to the 

 manner or way of going, the Messenger blood is largely controlled by 

 many other crosses, and as the physical conformation has the lai-ger 

 share in controlling the gait and way of going of the trotter, so the 

 conformation that belongs to the other trotting: families, enters laro-elv 

 into such as are deeply crossed in Messenger blood, and thereby in 

 marked degree affects the gait of the trotters thus bred. Such is the 

 influence of the Duroc cross to an extent hardly equaled by any 

 other. Such is also the influence of the cross from the blood of 

 Diomed, St. Lawrence and some others — as we shall see further 

 along. 



The Bellfounder cross had an important influence over the Messengers, 

 but it was less in the matter of apparent way of going than in some 

 other respects. While the Messenger blood is in reality the most 

 powerful and all-prevailing trotting blood ever introduced in our 

 American trotter, and seems to be a channel that floats or carries all 

 other bloods with it, it is one, nevertheless, that has been largely 

 modified in its manifestations by other crosses — more particularly, 

 however, because of the modified conformations and physical organ- 

 isms that our trotters have borrowed from the other crosses than from 

 any yielding of the force and quality of the Messenger to them in the 

 matter of trotting quality. 



A close study of the Messenger family establishes the fact, not new 

 or mysterious to breeders of experience, that this blood, derived as it 

 has been from two separate and dissimilar sources, exhibits the forces 

 peculiar to each in a sort of antagonism, and that the force and power 

 of each is displayed in proportion as circumstances are presented 

 which favor that particular element. It is the antagonism of the 

 trotting quality against the racing or galloping element, and it proves 



