LIMIT OF TROTTING SPEED. 



(Published in the "New York Sportsman," December 26, 1891.) 



I do not see how we can reasonably expect a two- 

 minute trotter. I have seen all the fastest horses of the 

 world trot ; I mean by this, the fastest by the crucial test 

 of a public record, and I assume that they are the fastest 

 ones, but I have never seen a quarter trotted in 30 sec- 

 onds. 



Now to trot a mile in two minutes, a horse would 

 have to go four quarters at that average, and be able to 

 trot one quarter in about 28 seconds. At least there has 

 been about that relative difference between the fastest 

 quarter in every fast mile that was ever trotted, and the 

 slowest one in the same mile. 



There is no denvinor the fact that trotters of olden 

 time had almost, if not quite as much speed as the ones 

 of the present day, and the principal difference is that 

 our horses can carry the clip a greater distance than the 

 trotters of the past. 



This may be accounted for partially by the difference 

 in tracks and the weight of vehicles, and the mode of 

 training. We all know that there are a great many more 

 trotters capable of extreme feats in our times, but that 

 simply comes as a result of breeding. 



In all probability there are a thousand trotters bred 

 now-a-days to where there was one bred forty or fifty 

 years ago. 



About 2 105 will, in my judgment, be the limit of trot- 

 ting speed ; that is unless we vastly improve over our 



