226 A TREATISE ON HORSE-BREEDING. 



headquarters at Louisville, Ky. As foundation 

 stock, stallions that have been especially dis- 

 tinguished as sires of good saddle horses have 

 been taken, and a persistent and systematic 

 effort to establish a breed of saddle horses is 

 now being made. In England the trot is now 

 the favorite saddle gait; the fox trot, the run- 

 ning walk, the pace and the rack, which in this 

 country are in such high favor, are not now 

 seen there at all under the saddle, and our 

 "gaited saddle horses' 7 would be a decided in- 

 novation on Rotten Eow in Hyde Park, although 

 horses that ambled or paced were very popular 

 there a hundred years ago. 



ORLOFF TROTTERS. 



Although the Orloff trotters of Russia have 

 been but sparingly introduced into this country, 

 yet they are so frequently referred to in discus- 

 sions upon horse-breeding, and especially in 

 those pertaining to the breeding of trotting 

 horses, that a history of the breed and a com- 

 parison of their merits with our own trotters 

 cannot fail to be interesting. The breed takes 

 its name from Count Alexis Orloff Tschismen- 

 sky, an enthusiastic horseman of Russia, who, 

 in 1775, imported from Arabia a grey stallion 

 named Smetanxa, said to have been of unusual 

 size and strength. A Danish mare was bred 

 to this imported Arabian stallion, and the pro- 



