146 THE HORSE 



When compiling the American Trotting Register, Mr. J. H. 

 Wallace wrote these interesting remarks, vol. i., 1871: — 



" /s there a particular breed that trots.' — Elaborate 

 opinions have been given to the world from time to time, 

 holding substantially that the English race-horse was as 

 good a trotter as could be produced if trained to that 

 gait. . . . However much may have been written, and 

 however finely spun the theories that the true way is to go 

 indiscriminately into thoroughbred families, no sane man 

 will attach a particle of value to them till it has shown that 

 such breeding has produced trotters. While the trotting 

 gait is partly the result of education and training, there is 

 no fact in the experience of at least a generation more 

 clearly and fully established than that there must be a 

 natural tendency to trot, or all efforts to make a trotter by 

 training will signally fail. I do not wish to be understood 

 as opening a crusade against the thoroughbred horse for the 

 experience of two hundred years has shown him on the 

 course, in the chase, on the march, and in the battle-charge 

 to be vastly superior to all others, and when we get to the 

 best trotting horse the world will produce, he must have 

 the courage, the will, the speed and the endurance of the 

 four-mile thoroughbred ; which qualities he can only obtain 

 by partaking largely of his blood. 



"But notwithstanding the fallacy of the indiscriminate 

 use of the thoroughbred to produce trotters, we are indebted 

 to the thoroughbred after all for the trotter; but this debt is 

 substantially limited to a single family of thoroughbreds or 

 the descendants of one single horse ' Sampson ' bred by 

 Mr. Preston 1745, and trained by Robinson of Malton, from 

 whom Mambrino was descended. Eysdyk's Hambletonian 

 and Mambrino Chief were a fourth remove from the 

 Enghsh Mambrino. It is true Eysdyk's Hambletonian is 

 in a manner inbred to Messenger, and can thus trace to 

 Mambrino through some different lines ; but Mambrino 

 Chief has but a single line." 



Since these remarks were penned the value of thorough- 

 bred blood in the trotting horse has been constantly 

 emphasised, and so imbued is Mr. Walter Winans — whose 



