17G nAMBLETONIAN. 



It has been a fact which can scarcely have escaped the observation 

 of every intelligont breeder, that Hambletonian was not a success 

 ■with thoroughbred mares. Those most familiar with the get of this 

 horse, and particularly his late owner, it is said, have uniformly 

 •observed that he was an absolute faikn-e with such mares, although 

 no one can say he was not a highly-bred horse. I know it has been 

 •claimed that one of his sons, most distinguished as a trotter and a sire 

 of trotters, is from a thoroughbred mare. The horse to which I refer 

 — Edward Everett — is one in which the Bellfounder blood has had 

 full scope, and a large share in the composition, and he is much too 

 good a horse, in my opinion, ever to have been produced by Hamble- 

 tonian from a strictly thoroughbred mare. As I shall give all of these 

 prominent sons of Hambletonian full and separate consideration, I do 

 not wish to be limited or concluded by the casual reference here 

 made; nor do I wish it understood that I enter, by such opinions thus 

 exj^ressed, into the arena of any controversy concerning pedigrees. I 

 give my opinions simply in the light of my understanding of the oper- 

 ation of one blood upon another. But to return. I may say that 

 Hambletonian has had many very su])erior mares — some very fast 

 ones, trotters, and those coming from racing families — yet he has failed 

 to produce horses of even respectable trotting action from many of 

 them. It is my opinion that he has not been so universally success- 

 ful with all clases of mares as Strader's C. M. Clay Jr., and far behind 

 Almont and Mambrino Patchen and others of that family. A close 

 study of the characteristics of the produce wherein he has failed, "will 

 go far to show that it was in combination when this same Bellfounder 

 -element remained neutral, and was not called out or utilized. A sim- 

 ilar lesson may be drawn from cases where he has even attained his 

 greatest success. 



A stallion — either racer or trotter — often produces his greatest per- 

 former from an outcross which, while not so remote as to possess no 

 breeding affinity for the original type, yet introduces elements so 

 foreign as to render the animal thus produced (great performer though 

 he be) of no value as a reproducer — like the great Plenipotentiary, a 

 performer on the turf with no equal in his day, but as a sire a failure 

 BO great that he is sometimes called the poorest son of the greatest 

 €ire. The American Star family was made up almost precisely like 

 American Eclipse, Post Boy, BKxcher, Patriot, and several other fami- 

 lies — a combination mainly of the blood of the two families of Diomed 

 and Messenger. But similarity of blood does not always follow simi- 



