' I 



THE AMERICAN TROTTING HORSE. 95 



A State law of New York, passed in 1802, forbidding all 

 horse racing and trotting, was amended in 1821. and allowed 

 the training, pacing, trotting, and running of horses upon 

 certain regulated courses in Queen's County on Long Island. 

 There were somewhat similar enactments in other States, 

 and though racing was prohibited trotting was permitted, so 

 that the sport received encouragement while racing was pro- 

 scribed. In this way American tastes were guided in the 

 direction of trotting, a circumstance which has had no small 

 influence in its subsequent development. 



" The foreign horse that played the most important part in 

 originating the American trotting breed, and that figures in 

 the ancestry of our greatest sires and performers, was imported 

 Messenger." In these words Mr. Leslie Macleod, in the 

 paper to which we have already referred, confesses how large 

 a part this great sire has performed in the creation of the 

 trotter. Messenger is registered in the General Stud Book as 

 having been got by Mambrino from a mare by Turf, from 

 Regulus mare by Starling out of Snap's dam by Fox. He 

 was foaled in 1780, and was grey in colour, like his sire, his 

 height being 15.3. It was in 1788 that he was exported 

 to Philadelphia, United States. His sire, Mambrino, was 

 bred by Mr. John Atkinson, of Scholes, near Leeds, in 1768, 

 and was sold in 1771 to Lord Grosvenor. He was got by 

 Engineer (a son of Sampson) out of a mare by Old Cade, and 

 it is stated that Mambrino was also sent to America, and 

 " became the progenitor of the finest coach and trotting horses 

 ever produced in any country, while, before quitting England, 

 he begot some coach-horses that were never equalled." 

 Sampson, the grandsire of Mambrino, was a black horse of 

 great size and power. Lawrence observes that he was the 

 strongest horse that ever raced, and was entitled to pre- 

 eminence if viewed as a hackney or hunter. He was fifteen 

 hands and a-half in height, and it is alleged by Lawrence that 

 at twenty, and perhaps fifteen stone, he would have beaten 

 over the course both Flying Childers and Eclipse. Sampsoi. 



