APPENDIX. 341 



that lie is infinitely a better horse than his sire, and moreover, far 

 better than any horse of his family, the reader can draw his own 

 conclusions as to what influence his dam exerted in making him what 

 he is. 



Now I have briefly outlined the four chief trotting-families — 

 the Hambletonians, the Mambrino Chiefs, the Clays and the Black 

 Hawks. Of course I have left innumerable minor lines untouched, 

 but I cannot well complete a sketch of the principal elements enter- 

 ing into the trotting-blood of to-day, without touching upon the 

 groups of families of pacing origin. 



It is useless to discuss the origin of the pacing gait, for even as 

 horses galloped and as horses trotted, so horses paced at a period 

 " whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary," On the 

 frieze of the Parthenon at Athens, the hand of the sculptor left time- 

 defying evidence that the pacer was known in Greece when she was 

 at the zenith of her glory, four hundred years before the Christian 

 era. The bronze horses of Saint Marks in Venice were cast (probably 

 about the beginning of the Christian era) in the pacing attitude. 

 During the Roman regime in Britain, we are told that the ambulatara 

 was "perhaps the universal and traveling pace of the Romans." 

 Fitz Stephen, a monk of Canterbury, wrting in the twelfth century, 

 tells us that at Smithfield, then a suburb of London, on Fridays 

 "shows were held of well-bred horses exposed for sale," and he adds 

 that it was "pleasant to see the nags, with their smooth and shiny 

 coats, smoothly ambling along." In 1558, Master Blundeville, one of 

 the early English writers on the horse, said : * ' Some men have a breed 

 of great horses, meete for the warre and to serve in the field; others 

 breed ambling horses of mean stature for the journey, and to travel 

 by the way. Some againe, a race of swift runners to run for wagers," 

 etc. In the reign of Charles II a great impetus was given to racing, 

 and continual importations of Eastern blood flowed into England. 

 The race-horse was forming as a breed, and took the first place in 

 the affections of Englishmen. Before the overwhelming tides of 

 desert blood the pacer gradually became extinct in England, until 

 John Lawrence tells us, in 1809, that "the people have lost all 

 remembrance of the amble." Indeed, it is the popular belief, 

 wholly untenable, however, that the pacer never was known to exist 

 in England. At the time of the founding of the American colonies, 

 the pacer was at least popular, if not esteemed patrician, as in the 

 early days ; and as the hor?'^ ^tock of the colonies came chiefly from 



