STALLIONS, BROOD MARES AND FOALS. 153 



ordinary road horses and farm horses the young 

 mares may be used sufficiently to effect the same 

 object while they are being bred. I am a firm 

 believer in the tendency of animal life to adapt 

 itself to its surroundings and conditions; con- 

 sequently, I believe in working the sires and 

 dams that are to get and produce work horses 

 and in trotting or running those that are to 

 produce trotters and runners. It is a law of 

 nature which cannot safely be ignored. The 

 famous old pacing mare Pocahontas paced some 

 of the hardest races of her life in the winter 

 of 1853-54, and her great son Tom Rolfe was 

 foaled a few months afterward. Blink Bonny, 

 the dam of Blair Athol, ran many races in her 

 younger days. The same is true of Seclusion, 

 the dam of Hermit, and of Marigold, the dam 

 of Doncaster, and of Little Lady, the dam of 

 Camballo, and of Pocahontas, the dam of Stock- 

 well, Rataplan, King Tom, etc. But it is need- 

 less to specify further; the history of the turf 

 furnishes incontestable evidence of the correct- 

 ness of the propositions announced at the be- 

 ginning of this paragraph; and so emphatically 

 has the experience of trotting-horse breeders 

 within the past ten years confirmed it that the 

 practice of breeding from other than sires in 

 which speed has been developed as well as in- 

 herited has almost become obsolete among in- 

 telligent breeders. 



