64 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE. 
Sampson. Great length from hip to hock imples a 
short cannon bone in the hind leg, and a short cannon 
bone in front is also the badge of a trotter. Smug- 
gler and Stamboul are the only notable exceptions 
to this rule that I recall. Wide hips are apt to be 
found in a trotting horse: this is especially true of 
the Clay family. Rysdyck’s Hambletonian had a 
round rump, but a sloping rump is more common in 
the trotter; an excessively sloping rump, however, is 
the peculiar mark of a pacer. Very oblique shoulders, 
running far back, such as belong to the saddle horse 
and hunter, seldom occur in a fast trotter; and I be- 
lieve that this remark would be almost equally true 
of running horses. Many trotters, as we have seen, 
are disfigured by tails set on low; and this again 
is a common feature in running horses. In fact, 
shoulders inclined to be straight, and drooping tails, 
are thought by some writers to have a close connec- 
tion with excessive speed at any gait. A long body 
combined with a rather short back furnishes another 
indication of trotting capacity; and this was the 
shape of Flora Temple, the first horse to attain 
national reputation as a trotter. 
Flora Temple reduced the record for a mile from 
2.254 to 2.193. She was well born, her sire being 
Kentucky Hunter, but in her early youth she was 
considered almost worthless on account of her wild, 
and, as everybody supposed, ungovernable temper. 
Flora, as they called her at first, was a rough-coated 
little bay mare, not over fourteen hands two inches 
high, but possessed of a blood-like head, shapely neck, 
straight back, and fine legs with powerful muscles. 
Her birthplace was in the neighborhood of Utica, 
