254 TALES OF THE TURF. 



cutting" order, whether it be at the trotting gait or at the 

 galop. Here in America we use the thoroughbred ex- 

 clusively for racing, but in England cavalry officers take 

 especial delight in pressing the fine animal into their 

 active service. 



The story of the American trotting- horse is one of in- 

 tense interest to the public, for he is peculiarly an Ameri- 

 can institution. By way of preliminary I may say that he 

 is a descendant originally from a cross of the old English 

 Norfolk trotter family with the thoroughbred. Imported 

 Messenger is the founder of the family in America, and 

 he was an animal born with the trotting instinct devel- 

 oped to an almost abnormal degree. Almost every trot- 

 ting horse in America to-day traces directly to him. The 

 family was then improved by the importation of Bell- 

 founder, who was in reality a Norfolk trotter, with a rec- 

 ord, so tradition has it, of seventeen miles in an hour. 

 But the most potent and most fashionable branch of the 

 trotting horse family developed from the Charles Kent 

 Mare, sired by Bellfounder, and out of a mare of Messen- 

 ger descent, bred to Abdallah, a great grandson of imp. 

 Messenger. The result of this union was Rvsdvk's Ham- 

 bletonian, far and away the greatest progenitor of trot- 

 ting stars in this country. Nancy Hanks, Stamboul, 

 Kremlin, Sunol, Maud S., Arion, Palo Alto and others as 

 famous, trace to him. 



In conformation the trotter is one of more substance, 

 of more bone and perhaps less finish than marks the thor- 

 oughbred. In fact, he partakes somewhat of the form of 

 what is now known as the hackney, and in reality the trot- 

 ter must be regarded as an intermediate step between the 

 thoroughbred and the hackney. The highest type of the 

 trotter has knee action between the stiff-kneed action of 



