214 



A TREATISE ON HORSE-BREEDING. 



age for these two years; but, taking the aver- 

 age of the Buffalo track for the first five years 

 of its existence, we find it to be 2:32^, while 

 for the five years from 1880 to 1884, inclusive, 

 it is reduced to 2:21J. 



The annual summer meeting of 1885 was 

 omitted at Buffalo, and, beginning with that 

 year at Cleveland, another one of our promi- 

 nent trotting associations, we find the aver- 

 ages have been as follows: 



The averages for the last four years, as shown 

 in the foregoing, do not fairly represent the 

 average speed of the trained horses that par- 

 ticipated in the trotting contests from the fact 

 that within that period stake races for trotters 

 two and three years old have been a prominent 

 feature of the Cleveland meetings, and the 

 records made by these immature trotters being 

 included in our computation have kept the 

 averages much above what they would other- 

 wise have been. 



While much of this increase in the average 

 speed of our trotting horses should, in justice, 

 be attributed to improvement in our vehicles 

 and tracks, and to increased skill in the trainer, 

 yet it is undeniable that by far the greater por- 



