HAlfDBOOK OF THE TURF. 165 



Median Phalanx. The coronary bone, or small 

 pastern. 



Medicine. For a horse to require a dose of medicine is 

 an evidence of unsoundness; therefore, until the effects of 

 medicine are removed, the horse is unsound. 



Meeting: ; Meet. A race or trotting event. The word 

 originated from the English term " meet," to meet for the 

 chase or hunt on horseback; hence, it came to be applied to 

 the events of the running turf, and subsequently to trotting 

 races. By the rules of tlie Turf Congress a meeting begins at 

 10 o'clock A. M., of the first day, and ends one hour after the 

 last race of the last day. 



Member. Any driving park association, society fair 

 ground, or race track owned or leased by a corporation or by 

 an individual, upon which races are trotted or paced under the 

 rules of either the National or American trotting associations, 

 is knowm as a " member " of such association. 



Members. The legs of a horse are called its members. 



Messeng'er. One of the greatest horses of all history, and 

 the foundation source of the American trotter, the fleetest and 

 stoutest breed of horses in the w^orld. Foaled in 1780. Bred 

 by John Pratt, of New Market, England. By Mambrino, by 

 Engineer, a son of Sampson, by Blaze, by Flying Childers, by 

 the Darley Arabian — the celebrated horse imported into Eng- 

 land from the Levant in the reign of Queen Anne, (1702-1714); 

 dam, by Turf, by Matchem, by Cade, by the Godolphin 

 Arabian. His color was gray; he stood 15.3 hands high, a 

 plain, somewhat coarse animal, having a large, bony head, low 

 in the withers, upright shoulders, and a rather short, straight 

 neck. He had large knees and hocks, and his windpipe and 

 nostrils are described by contemporary writers to have been 

 nearly twice as large as ordinary. Whether in motion, or at 

 rest, his legs were said to have been always in a perfect position. 

 He was an animal of great vigor and soundness, and although 

 running bred was a natural trotter. Messenger was imported in 

 May, 1788, by Thomas Benger, of Bristol, Pa., and when he 

 landed at Philadelphia, said Hiram Woodruff, <' the value of 

 not less than one hundred million dollars struck our soil." He 

 never went out of the States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and 

 New York, and died on the farm of Tounsend Cock, near 

 Oyster Bay, Long Island, N. Y., January 28, 1808, being 

 twenty-eight years of age, and " having attained such a height 

 of equine reputation that he was buried with military honors, 

 and a charge of musketry was fired over his grave." Messen- 



