430 MAMBRINO CIIIKF. 



bones, and this taint he has transmitted with fatal certainty, wherever 

 strong and positive currents of his blood prevail. In Chajiter V, I 

 called attention to the statement of one who knew the horse well 

 while living, and who asserted that the horse was himself spavined,, 

 and that such was the tendency of his blood in his descendants. Tho 

 long thigh and the sickle hocks and curbs of the American Eclipse 

 family, were among their most noted characteristics. The happy 

 adaptation of the blood of Eclipse to the production of trotters, led 

 to the breeding of Mambrino Chief to many Eclipse mares. Thus 

 the Duroe blood was doubled, and with it the tendency to curbs and 

 spavins was greatly intensified. My attention has been called to the 

 fact that the very excellent stallion Idol, by Mambrino Chief, whose 

 dam was an Eclipse mare, has produced several that were curbed and 

 otherwise defective, and the case of Giraffe by Alhambra, similarly 

 bred dam by Idol, and several others, are now before me bearing 

 testimony to the baneful effects of in-breeding the Duroc blood, and 

 thus intensifying its pernicious tendencies. Bear it in mind that 

 Alhambra and Idol are both highly bred and very valuable horses, as 

 I have shown in Chapter X and shall further show in Chapter XXIII, 

 in the further progress of this subject; and, while I would do them 

 no injustice, the truth must be told. I have no unfriendliness for any 

 of these stallions, on the contrary, admire the good qualities of each 

 of them very much, and have been a patron of many of them; but I 

 am not friendly to unsoundness in any form, and regard my duty to 

 the reading public more than I do the sensitiveness of any parties 

 interested in such animals. 



In Chapter V, I have fully treated of this subject relating to the 

 blood traits of Duroc, and the tendency toward infirmity. While 

 such was the inherited taint that has been transmitted, in greater or 

 less degree, to all of his descendants, it will be borne in mind that it 

 is only to the repeated crosses and intensified currents of that blood 

 that I object. 



It is sometimes necessary to exercise the most extreme care in 

 regard to reuniting separate channels of an infected blood, such as that 

 of Duroc and Henry, as it often happens that while two parents in 

 themselves are sound and free from blemish, the concentration of the 

 blood in the produce renders them unsound and worthless. Two 

 illustrations of this have occurred in my own experience as a breeder. 

 A mare by Searcher, he by Barney Henry, by Signal, a descendant 

 of Henry, was an animal of fine form, and could trot in 2:42, perfectly 



