DUROC-MESSENGER GAIT. 429 



gait. But the gait of Mambrino Chief and all his family, including 

 the Almonts, is essentially Messenger Duroc, and is one that is recog- 

 nizable anywhere. It is not the gait of the Mambrino or the Mam- 

 brino Paymaster family. Mambrino produced Almack, and he, in 

 turn, the Champion family; and the gaits of all these bear a close 

 resemblance to the elastic, propelling, rear-reachiiig gait of the Ab- 

 dallahs, but totally unlike the Messenger Duroc element. This cross 

 had such long thigh, and such long bone from stifle to the whirlbone 

 joint, and at the same time lacked in the flank room or distance from 

 the stifle to the hip, that the motion of the hind limbs involved such 

 a folding up of these members, with so little room for it, that it gave 

 the horse a sprawling motion — spreading out at the stifle — and a wab- 

 bling style about the hindquarters wholly unlike the even, elastic 

 tread of the Abdallah and Champion families. Any one who has seen 

 a three-year-old Almont and one of the same age by the present 

 Messenger Duroc turned loose in a lot, can not have failed to recog- 

 nize the great similarity, I may say identity, of their gaits; they lift 

 the hocks hip-h and are showv fellows. The Blackwoods train in the 

 same school; and this gait prevails in all the Mambrino Chief family, 

 but is greatly modified in the Ericsson branch, by the long measure 

 from hip to hock of Mrs. Caudle, the New York bred mare that pro- 

 duced Ericsson, a branch of the family which I have shown had, in 

 addition to the long thigh, a long reach from hip to hock, and a gait 

 very similar to the Royal Georges. 



It is important that it be kept in mind that all these peculiarities of 

 gait in the dift'erent families of trotters come from peculiarities in the 

 physical conformation and nervous organism of those various families, 

 and are alike inheritable and at the same time unmistakable evidences 

 of family lineage. No blood traits are more certainly transmissible, 

 or more clearly recognizable. 



Again, the Messenger family and their descendants, the Hamble- 

 tonians, have not been known as early trotters or in any respect early 

 maturers, but the stock of Messenger Duroc, we are told, were grown 

 at three years and ready for work. It was one of the characteristics 

 of his produce, and has been transmitted, beyond all doubt, to the 

 descendants of Mambrino Chief. It is in this family that we have 

 heard so much of baby trotters in recent years. 



Another testimony of an unquestionable nature is found in this, 

 that the blood of old Duroc was known and recognized in his lifetime 

 AS tainted, and infected with a tendency to spavins, curbs, and ring- 



