HIS EARLY CHAEACTER. 505 



gulfs can not be spanned so readily as narrow ones, and in all their 

 crossings, the right place would not often be secured. 



The scope of this chapter only embraces such lines of descent as 

 have succeeded in bringing the Morgan horse to the rank of a first 

 class roadster and trotting horse — either by the process of judicious 

 selections from among their own numbers, of those having elements of 

 adaptation, or that of gradual and successful introduction of other 

 blood elements possessing an adaptation to the double purpose of 

 securing roadster qualities, and of engrafting them on this difficult 

 and informed stock. 



Before proceeding, however, it is important that I should advert to 

 some peculiarities of the original and succeeding members of the 

 family. 



That he came from a thoroughbred, anct one strong and close to 

 the parent Arab stock, is strongly suggested in his own form and 

 traits of character, and the intensity of his impress as a stallion. 

 That his dam also had some — even much of the same quality, is more 

 than probable, but we can not escape the conclusion, that she also had 

 some other qualities and elements which gave to Morgan a type and 

 character much different in some essentials from the Arab qualities of 

 True Briton and Traveller. That she had also elements of Canadian 

 blood in close union, is most apjjarent in the rapidity with which such 

 character grew in the Morgan family, and the powerful influence that 

 was wrought in the Morgans at an early period of their history. 



An element of road blood derived from Canadian sources, although 

 a small factor in the composition of a horse, coming from True 

 Briton and the so-called Wildair mare, would constitute a germ 

 which would grow and finally assume a character of great positive- 

 ness and influence, just as the crosses of racing blood in Pilot Jr. 

 gave him t^^pe and character, and caused him to impress himself so 

 powerfully on the produce of racing or thoroughbred mares. This 

 element thus introduced in the first progenitor, became one of the 

 fixed and positive traits in the Morgan horse, and the subsequent 

 generations, if in-bred in the same line of blood, would and did grow 

 and develop the qualities of the Canadian or road stock in modified 

 form. Thus it was that the original clean legs of the Morgan became 

 hairy; his mane and tail, once as light as that of an Arab, became 

 heavy and coarse. 



He was at first a galloper and adapted to the puri:)oses of a short 

 distance race horse — the hillsides and crooked valleys of Vermont and 



