210 ADMINISTRATOR. 



and sweeping stride. They display their readiness for the trotting 

 gait at a very early age, never lacking for courage and resolution, and 

 showing much less nervous intractability than many other families. 

 They bear early training, and can be forced to the utmost displays of 

 speed with an ease and a freedom from excitement shown b}' few 

 families. They display a total absence of that hotheadedness wliich 

 characterizes some otherwise valuable strains. While they require 

 but little of the lash, they will bear it, and let out the last links they 

 possess. These qualities render the Duroc- Messenger a class that 

 bear training early, hence the earliness of their fame as trotters. They 

 excel in the class of two and three-year-old performers. Their courage 

 and pluck in the severe contests of a race never fail, and the name 

 of quitter can not with any degree of propriety be applied to them. 

 They are also distinguished for the success of this blood when crossed 

 Avith other stock that are totally deficient in trotting action. The 

 produce of stallions from this cross on thoroughbred and other highly 

 bred mares is often marked in high degree. 



The original union was that of two thoroughbred strains, and pro- 

 duced in that union superior roadsters. 



Stevens' Messenger Duroc was by Duroc, from Vincenta, a thor- 

 oughbred daughter of Messenger, and he was a roadster of great 

 excellence, and exhibited qualities of a horse for harness and road 

 purposes of the highest order. Stockholm's American Star was bred 

 in like manner, and his dam was claimed to be a thoroughbred, 

 although the pedigree can not be shown. He was both a runner and 

 a trotter, and a noted horse at both gaits. The fame of the second or 

 Seely's American Star and his family, is of the first order; and linked 

 with the descendants of Hambletonian, the cross has for a long 

 period shone as a star of the first magnitude. 



The real greatness of Administrator furnishes another useful chap- 

 ter in the lesson so often to be learned in the science of breeding and 

 so often presented in this work — that of making radical and important 

 changes from original conditions of great dissimilarity. 



The blood of Messenger and that of Duroc had only one original ele- 

 ment of similaiity, and that was the Arabic or racing quality, which 

 ■was not only foreign but opposed to all trotting tendencies. 



In the Duroc blood there was no trotting quality whatever, except 

 that from the Medley cross he had inherited a physical conformation that 

 furnished a suitable scion upon which to engraft trotting tendencies 

 and instincts. The latter existed in Messenger in intimate and close, 

 union with his thorouo'hbred or i»acin'X characteristics. 



