MESSENGER DUROC. 233 



and his produce show a Hkeness to those of the other family that 

 stamps them as of one blood and a common kinship, although coming 

 from different sires. 



In Messenger Duroc there was not the wide discrepancy between 

 the physical conformation of the sire and dam, and in the antecedent 

 -crosses. On the dam's side it was successive unions of the blood 

 of Messenger and Duroc for several generations, each coming in part 

 through animals that were not strictlv thorouo-hbred. 



Moreover, the sire in this case was not one of the coarseness and 

 lack of quality displayed by Mainbrino Chief. 



While Messenger Duroc has not the muscular power in small com- 

 pass that marks Alhambra, he has a vastly superior leverage or 

 machinery with which to execute the impulses that propel the muscu- 

 lar organism. His great frame-work is built on the true model for 

 one of the grandest trotters on a large scale we have anywhere seen. 

 For the far-reaching, great striding, and free, open stepping gait of 

 the trotter, he has a form and physical conformation not surpassed by 

 any we have yet produced in any family. Had Lady Thorn raised a 

 son from Hambletonian as the sire, we might have expected a horse 

 showing a conformation equal lo that of Messenger Duroc or any 

 other. The stallion Administrator comes the closest and in some 

 respects even surpasses him, but not in leverage. 



The similarity between Messenger Duroc and Administrator is 

 greater than any other two sons of Hambletonian, yet the diiferences, 

 simply those of direction and degree in certain particulars, make them 

 vndely diflFerent both in themselves and in their produce. The differ- 

 ence in size, conformation and blood constituents is not so orreat as in 

 the tendencies or workings of those same blood elements. Both are 

 made up almost essentially in character of the blood constituents of 

 Messenger, Duroc and Bellfounder. But it is not an uncommon thing 

 for the blood of one animal to work one way in one organization, and 

 a very different way in another, almost identical in the constituent 

 factors embraced in the union. The dam of Ohio Bellfounder was 

 almost a fac-simile in blood of the dam of the Charles Kent mare; but 

 Hambletonian, in his great family, represents the one, and nothing 

 represents the other. It was the blood of Bellfounder that made the 

 difference in each case. 



The immense trotting leverage of Messenger Duroc is shown in a 

 length of 41 inches from hip to hock, and a thigh 25^- inches. No 

 stallion in America can surpass him in the 02:>en display of a free, 



