326 HORSE PORTRAITURE. 



services alone. I anxiously trust he will be remunerated 

 for the enterprise, but it strikes me that it must have been 

 hard to find that number of mares, which from breeding 

 and form, could all be advantageously bred to the same 

 horse. Had he selected those of the finest blood to breed 

 to Hambletonian, and put the others to a thorougbred that 

 had form, size and a good trotting step, I think the pro- 

 geny would have been better. Planet is said to show 

 nearly a three-minute gait when allowed to trot in his 

 exercise. A colt front imported Bonnie Scotland, three 

 years old and I presume the only one of his get that has 

 been trained to that gait trotted very fast last season. 

 He was in a colt stake at Chicago, but was taken with the 

 distemper, and had to be laid by. The stake was won by 

 a three-year-old, the get of the Falcon, distancing in three 

 minutes her only competitor. She is sixteen hands and 

 an inch high, and had only been harnessed a few times 

 before the trot. Another of the Falcon's get, a four-year- 

 old, won the stake for that age, distancing a granddaughter 

 of Eysdyk's Hambletonian the third heat in 2 :47 ; the 

 track very heavy. I saw the four-year-old trofc in thirty- 

 six early in the season, and had he been in hands that 

 knew how to train him judiciously, I think he would have 

 been at the head of the list as a four-year-old trotter. 



Now for my heterodox notions. I would prefer to breed 

 from Planet or Bonnie Scotland, having thoroughbred 

 mares of proper form, size, and step, with as much Mes- 

 senger and Trustee blood as I could get, than from even 

 the famed Hambletonian. I do not want to take away 

 one iota of the well-merited fame of Mr. Rysdyk's horse, 

 and had I a breeding establishment where I could send a 

 mare or two of pure blood to him, and was rich enough 

 to afford the outlay, I should certainly do so in order to 

 get the Messenger blood, of which he has as much as any 

 living horse, and probably more. I should hope that the 



