244 EDWARD EVERETT. 



binatiohs. Moreover, I have constantly presented the idea, here quite 

 manifest, that these changes from these great and positive elements 

 can not be made abrujitly, but must be reached by gradual approaches. 

 This is a law of breeding never more clearly illustrated than in con- 

 nection with these two blood elements. 



Hambletonian has left one son from a thoroughbred mare, and let 

 his total unfitness as a trotting sire teach us the lesson that the blood 

 of a thoroughbred mare could not produce so great a stallion as 

 Edward Everett. But the dam of Edward Everett, while she had a 

 near cross of Diomed blood beyond reasonable doubt, had such a 

 backing up of the blood of Messenger — for it was Messenger and 

 nothing else shining out so positively — that she drew out of Hambleto- 

 nian the blended qualities of Abdallah and Bellfounder in a degree 

 not surpassed by any son he has produced. The composition of 

 Edward Everett is as clearly indicated as that of any son of Hamble- 

 tonian. Diomed is in the near ground, but not in as strong force as 

 in the Stars, who have two crosses near at hand; Everett has but one, 

 and no Duroc whatever. But his strong Messenger and Bellfounder 

 caste is clear, unmistakable and very positive. He has the blood 

 composition of a great trotting sire. The record attests the fact that 

 such he is. The number of his produce is not probably great, owing 

 to the high price at which his services have been held in recent years. 

 In fact he has occupied more the character of a private stallion, and 

 as such his services were most likely limited in large degree to the 

 mares belonging to his owner. Had he received the promiscuous 

 patronage due to his merits, he would, beyond doubt, present a list 

 which not many could equal. 



A close study of Everett and his family has revealed to me the fact 

 that the great power — the chief and distinguishing feature of his 

 family — is one of muscle ^ that it is in large part in the peculiarly 

 powerful muscular development of this family that their chief great- 

 ness is found. Their feet and legs are not equal to some others; their 

 skeleton anatomy has no elements of great trotting adaptation; but 

 they have inherited on one side a trotting brain and nerve organization 

 of surpassing force very well balanced, with an incomparable consti- 

 tutional vigor, and on the other they have the muscular form of a 

 race-horse that ran on his muscle, and by it wrote his name in bright 

 letters on the page of turf history. 



Joe Elliott is to-day the finest specimen of muscular development — 

 unless it be one other, which I shall mention in this chapter — that I 



