d6i TRAINING THE TROTTING HORSE. 



liigliest rate of speed known to have been attained by an OrlofE was 

 in trotting three versts in five minutes. A verst being l,166f yards, 

 it will be seen that the performance was at the rate of a mile in 

 about 2:31i. Though some specimens of the Orloff trotter were 

 brought to the United States, meeting trotting-blood superior to 

 their own, they naturally failed to leave their mark on our breed. 



The only reputed trotters mentioned by English writers were 

 certain horses located chiefly in the county of Norfolk. John Law- 

 rence, the earliest writer who mentions them, and a most entertain- 

 ing one, declares that ' ' the renowned Blank may be looked upon as 

 the father of trotters, since from his son Shales have proceeded the 

 best and greatest number of horses of that qualification." One of the 

 most famous of this tribe was Marshland Shales, a noted trotter that 

 sold for over 3,000 guineas at auction in 1812, when ten years old. 

 Records of the speed of these old English trotters are indefinite and 

 uncertain, but it is said that a mare named Phenomenon trotted in July, 

 1800, seventeen miles in 56:00, and in the same month repeated the 

 performance in 53:00. If this be true, this mare was the superior of 

 any American trotter, not of her day alone, but for many years after 

 her day. When we remember that this was at the rate of twenty 

 miles in 63:20, and that it was not until 1849 that Trustee, in America, 

 covered twenty miles in 59:35|, the conclusion is forced upon us that 

 the English had the material from which to build and evolve a great 

 breed of trotters. That they have nothing equal to Phenomenon in 

 these days is certain, and the cause of this retrogression is probably 

 that the trotting instinct and action in the horses of the olden time 

 has been submerged by repeated infusions of running-blood, just as 

 the ancient English pacer disappeared before the tides of Oriental 

 blood upon which the English thoroughbred is founded. The chief 

 and, indeed, only interest attaching to the Norfolk trotter is in the 

 fact thai it is practically certain that imported Bellfounder, the sire 

 of the dam of Rysdyk's Hambletonian, the greatest of all American 

 trotting progenitors, was one of this tribe. This horse was imported 

 from England in 1822, and was a powerful animal with gigantic 

 quarters, showy trotting action, and kindly disposition. Hamble- 

 tonian bore much resemblance to him in form and disposition. 



So much for foreign trotters — now as to the American breed. The 

 imported horse whose blood played the most important part in found- 

 ing the trotting-breed in the United States, was the grey race-horse Mes- 

 senger. Ever since trotting-speed began to be considered a mark of 



