138 ORIGINAL SOURCES OF TROTTING BLOOD. 



the matter of leverage; it will lengthen out his reach or distance of 

 stroke in his rear propellers, and it will increase his brain or mental 

 inclination toward the trotting gait. 



In the chapter on Hambletonian, and in that part of Chapter XIX 

 devoted to Sayer's Harry Clay, I illustrate this proposition fully. In 

 those chapters, and in the other frequent references I shall make to 

 this peculiarity, as evidenced in these two descendants of Bellfounder, 

 it will be made clear, that by in-breeding in the Bellfounder blood, 

 we increase the peculiar manifestations by which it marked the 

 Hambletonian family, both in the matter of physical conforma- 

 tion, and in the nerve or mental impulses of the trotting horse. 

 And thus I believe the trotting horse of this country is yet to 

 gain additional speed from the blood of the Norfolk trotter. I esti- 

 mate that his value to the American roadster and trotting: horse 

 in the first generation after the union was made available, was 

 equivalent to an advance of ten seconds in speed. 



In conclusion I may say, in regard to the popular estimate of the 

 value of Bellfounder, to the American trotter, that while it is true that 

 he has been in great part ignored and lightly esteemed in general, the 

 fact that the Messenger horse has been advanced in speed an average 

 of ten seconds or more by union with his blood; that the famed Abdal- 

 lah blood has nowhere, outside of the family of Hambletonian, attained 

 the speed or availability as a trotting factor which it has reached in 

 that union; that the famed American Star cross, which for a time 

 was a star of the first magnitude, has already begun to dim in lustre ; 

 and that the Duroc cross, with all its richness and exuberance as an 

 ingredient in the trotter, fails to show its inherent and independent 

 superiority, there is at this late day a returning tide of sentiment in 

 favor of the value of Bellfounder to our American roadster. 



The two branches of that blood in the Hambletonians and the 

 Sayer's Harry Clays, and the occasional lines, though dim and feeble, 

 tracing to Ohio Bellfounder and to Latourettes orTrempses Bellfounder, 

 or other almost forgotten branches, now and then come out as in tlie 

 trotter Conqueror, an in-bred Bellfounder, that made his one hundred 

 miles in 8 hours, 55 minutes and 53 seconds ; Sir Walter, the fastest 

 son of Abdallah, and whose dam was by Bellfounder, that trotted a 

 mile by the record in 2:27; the dam and grandam of King Philip, 

 the young son of Jay Gould, that attained a record of 2:21 at five 

 years of age; the Cromwell filly, in Kentucky, referred to in the chap, 

 ter on Almont — all combine to bring again the opinion, that was at 



