214 ADMINISTRATOR. 



widened enough to give him the appearance of a sprawler. His gait 

 for a large horse is greatly admired and approved by all horsemen. 

 This is contrary to the average Duroc characteristics, which generally 

 are found in a flank of insufficient depth, and muscles so apportioned 

 as to either heat the belly with the stifles, or go with a wide, open gait. 

 A gait of fair and reasonable Avidth is desirable for clean, non-inter- 

 fering action, but beyond that it is objectionable. In trotting he 

 throws his feet well out in front, and bends his knees admirablv with- 

 out lifting them too high, and his hind feet extend well backward, but 

 not so noticeably as in the Clay and Patchen families generally; 

 while the steady and powerful stroke with which they are brought up 

 under his body and sent forward, gives him the momentum of a very 

 powerful trotter; yet for all that, his way of going betokens the greatest 

 ease. The muscles of the body and of the limbs and quarters work 

 in such perfect harmony as to secure this easy and steady appearance 

 in his trotting action. 



While it is true that his double lines of Duroc blood are not the 

 controlling elements in his composition, the real force and value of 

 that blood is present in him in as rich a combination as can anywhere 

 be found in this country. He is, m fact, my beau ideal of a Duroc- 

 Messenger. The three elements of his composition — Messenger, Duroc^ 

 and Bellfounder — are so finely inwi'ought and so completely blended 

 as to form a perfect and homogeneous union, and work together in 

 entire harmony and in the exuberance of the most absolute healthful- 

 ness. Not an infirm trait or tendency is manifest in him. 



He is a great, strong horse, positive in his Messenger characteristics. 

 He has that ready fusible and ever affiliating caste which distinguishes 

 the union of the Messenger and Duroc bloods. 



He has also the rich qualities of the Bellfounder blood in a form 

 and degree where they are more readily reached and ajiplied — more 

 yielding and fusible perhaps than they existed in Hambletonian him- 

 self. The composite of the first two bloods formed the truest and 

 most suitable soil in which to reproduce the best fruits from the more 

 uncertain and unyielding Bellfounder. While a Duroc-Messenger 

 mare may not have been the equal of a Bellfounder in genuine trotting 

 quality, such a mare would have furnished a field far more yielding- 

 arid fruitful to the impress of any other blood. It was notably a 

 union that reatlily impressed all other bloods and as readily swallowed 

 them up in any composition into which they all entered. We have 

 never had an element in the American trotting horse that was so uni- 



