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THE AMERICAN TROTTING HORSE. 99 



words, if you desire the highest type of trotter or runner, 

 mate only with the best and highest type. As you cannot 

 gather grapes from thistles, neither can you expect to breed 

 world-breakers in point of speed at the trot from the Percheron 

 or Shire horse, nor uniformly from a type, rich though it be 

 in Oriental blood, whose instinct is to run and not to trot. 

 As regards gameness and stamina, it does not appear to me 

 that the highest type of trotter can borrow anything from the 

 thoroughbred. The resolute manner in which he trots heat 

 after heat, day in and day out, frequently after exhausting 

 scores before getting away from the wire, leaves nothing to be 

 said on the question of gameness.' 



"John Splan, one of the leading trainers, writes: 'When 

 we get brood mares with rive or six crosses in their pedigrees, 

 that have been tried through fire by actual battles on the 

 Turf, bred to stallions with the same characteristics, we will, I 

 think, have a family of racehorses that will not have to look 

 to a pacing family for speed, or to the thoroughbred for 

 staying qualities.' 



"The veteran driver Turner declares : * The horse that tries 

 to win is the one we want, whether the breeding be gilt-edged 

 or otherwise.' 



" Pedigree can only give opportunity a better chance. It 

 is a true saying that success depends on being ready when 

 one's opportunity comes. Pedigree is the best means of 

 making the trotter ready. 



" There are fifty mares in the table of great brood mares 

 whose breeding is unknown, and one hundred and fifty the 

 breeding of whose dams is unknown. These facts illus- 

 trate what pedigree may eventually do in breeding the trotter. 

 It will be some time before horses will have become so bred 

 that they have all become classified in their various ranks 

 so that none will be a trotter but of trotting breeding. The 

 time might come, however, when the admission to the Register 

 on standard claims will become occasional if the American 

 tendency to run everything into certain stud-book channels 



