RECOLLECTIONS OF MEN AND HORSES 



I quote a simple paragraph from General Tracy's 

 labored article : " The fast road mare has produced 

 a son or daughter that could trot faster than she 

 could, and so we have gone on from generation to 

 generation, each succeeding generation of horses be- 

 ing able to speed faster than the one that preceded 

 it. And thus by the law of the survival of the 

 fittest we have produced a horse that has no equal 

 at the trotting gait." I have no objection to a mare 

 intended for the breeding stud being trained within 

 moderation, but if the General wishes the public to 

 understand that the queens of the turf, when rele- 

 gated to the harem, have produced faster performers 

 than themselves, he is all at sea. The severely cam- 

 paigned mares have either proved sterile or failures 

 in the stud. The crown passed from Lady Suffolk 

 to Flora Temple, then to Lady Thorn and Gold- 

 smith Maid, and I have yet to learn that either of 

 these ever produced a trotter as fast as herself. The 

 ex-queens of the turf were failures in the stud be- 

 cause long training and severe tasks had sapped or 

 dried up the juices of vitality. I have stated that 

 George Wilkes was an exception among developed 

 sires and have declined to admit that a rule can 

 be proved by an exception to it. George Wilkes was 

 a sluggish horse and he lost just three times as many 

 heats as he won, and, after going to Kentucky, he 

 had the aid of fresh and highly-bred mares. These 

 supplied the vitality which he could not impart him- 

 self; and the hundreds of foal-owning Kentuckians, 

 each entitled to rank as a professor in a training 

 school, did the rest. No family was ever worked 

 with and boomed as was the George Wilkes family, 

 and yet, under the 2.20 test, Electioneer, an unde- 

 veloped stallion, by an undeveloped sire, out of an 



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