420 THE HORSE. 



rest assured beyond the possibility of a mistake, that the com- 

 petitor, who is jjrecisely his equal in every other respect, but 

 his inferior in blood, he will beat in lasting, in coming again, 

 and in endurance of punishment, by exactly so much as he does 

 excel him in blood. 



Isaj ! if he have very long to last, and very often to come 

 again, particularly at high weights, and in distress, he may 

 safely allow him the advantage of a very superior turn of speed. 

 And those lovers and admirers of the trotting horse, and depre- 

 ciators of the race horse, as if he were a mere toy of luxury 

 and idleness, an inciter to vain display, and an accomplice in 

 sin and scandal, tacitly admit his immeasurable superiority as 

 a progenitor, by the pains they take — wherever there is the 

 shadow of foundation for such a pretence — to prove that the 

 trotter is thoroughbred himself, or at least the jDroduct of three 

 or four pure crosses. 



For they well know that being shown fast, in his ow^n per- 

 formnnce, and in his blood indisputably of high thorough strain, 

 his value is multiplied tenfold. Such descent is all but a guar- 

 antee that, whatever else he may turn out, he will not turn out 

 a flincher or a dunghill. 



Pedigrees of trotters are rarely to be ascertained, or even 

 approximated, since they have for the most part passed through 

 many hands, and are no longer young, before their powers are 

 discovered — when it is too late to inquire. Still, it is known 

 that many, and, for every reason, suspected that more of the 

 best performers have been nearly if not qidte thoroughbred. 



Of this, however, I am prepared to treat more fully, when 

 I come to speak of trotters and the trotting turf, the reason of 

 their superior excellence and frequency in the United States, 

 and of their rarity and inferior speed in Great Britain. 



There is yet one branch of horse-breeding to be named, and 

 that, perhaps, the most important in a national point of view. 

 I mean the breeding of horses for mounting the cavalry service ; 

 and in none is the use of the thoroughbred stallion, as a sire, so 

 manifest as in this. 



The requirements of cavalry service, in modern armies, are 

 twofold — the first, outpost duty, making reconnoissances of 

 wide tracts of country, and skirmishing — the second, charging 



