I04 



The Book of the Horse. 



tliat way must study Woodruffe's " Trotting Horse of America," tlie country where the art has 

 been carried to perfection. Just as Ireland may claim to be the birthplace and nursery of 

 the steeplechaser, and England of the racehorse, so the United States has made the trotter 

 her own. 



At the meeting of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, at Beverley, a few years ago, a 

 prize was awarded to the American trotter Shepherd F. Knapp, whose action was as beautiful 

 as anything ever seen in this country, his hind-legs following or pushing on his fore-quarters 

 outside his fore-arms. For pace no English roadster could touch him. He was not a roadster 

 sire according to Norfolk, Suffolk^ or Yorkshire trotting authorities; in fact he was nearly 



ROAnSTER STALLION, THE PROPERTY OF MR. JOHN ABEL, OF NORWICH, 1871. 



thoroughbred. Major Stapylton, of Myton Ilall, Yorkshire, so well k-nowii some years ago 

 as a breeder of high-class horses of every kind — racehorses, iiunters, and harness-horses — 

 in Yorkshire and in town, and for the stamp of horses he drove in his four-in-hand coach 

 and other carriages,*. writes about the Shepherd F. Knapp : " He is, according to the American 

 pedigree, out of an Arab mare by Ethan Allen, by Morgan Black Hawk, by Sherman; Morgan 

 Howard's mare by a son of Hambletonian ; his dam said to be by imported Messenger, a 

 thoroughbred horse by Mambrino. His produce out of thoroughbred marcs in the course 

 of four years showing more of the shape of the dams than tlie horse, with good size, have 

 obtained the points so often wanting in so many of our hunters ami troltiiig-horses — capital 

 legs and shoulders, with action and constitution. With half-bred mares his power is still more 



* A picture of the M.ijor's celebrated horse Salad in, so .-Klmiial in his foiii-iii h,and Icani, for which he refused 700 guineas, 

 appears in the chapter describing the mail pliaeton. 



