THE BREEDS OF HORSES. 211 



horse bred in Virginia; Columbus, and Royal 

 George, both from Canada, have all been very 

 popular sires, and no compendium of the origin 

 of the American trotting horse would be com- 

 plete without reference to them. 



In no department of stock-breeding is the in- 

 fluence of heredity and of patient selection with 

 a view to the transmission and improvement of 

 a desired quality more apparent than in the 

 breeding of the trotting horse. Sixty years ago 

 the American trotting horse, as a breed, was un- 

 thought of; and one that could trot a mile in 

 less than three minutes was a wonderful ani- 

 mal! But the ability to trot fast was a desira- 

 ble quality and breeders sought to perpetuate 

 it. Animals that excelled the average of the 

 species as trotters were selected to breed from, 

 with a view to perpetuating and intensifying 

 this quality; but as its possession was at that 

 time an accident a spontaneous variation it 

 was found that but few of the immediate de- 

 scendants of the animals first chosen with a 

 view to breeding fast trotters could trot faster 

 than their remote ancestors. But when such 

 of them as did show improvement in this direc- 

 tion were again selected for breeding purposes 

 and coupled together it was found that, while 

 there were still many failures, the proportion 

 of the descendants that showed improvement 

 in the trotting gait beyond the average of their 



