TROTTING RACES. 89 
been compressed until they nearly meet. On these 
tracks the horses start from one end of the loop, go 
up one side, come back on the other, and finish at 
the starting point. The kite track is considered to 
be about two seconds faster than the ordinary or 
regulation track, because it consists almost entirely 
of two long stretches; but it is of course very un- 
satisfactory to the spectator, who is able to see, 
in any real sense, only the beginning and the finish 
of the race. It seems unlikely that these tracks will 
long be tolerated.? 
Then, too, the footing has greatly been improved. 
The best tracks now have an underlayer of turf or 
of bog grass, which makes them springy, and the 
surface is soft without being deep or heavy. The 
sulky drawn by Dutchman, the old-time trotter, of 
whom I have spoken in a former chapter, weighed 
eighty-two pounds. Hiram Woodruff, writing in 
1867, mentioned this fact, adding, “I now have two 
that weigh less than sixty pounds.” The present 
weight is about forty pounds.” This reduction of 
forty pounds, or one half of the total weight, since 
Dutchman’s day, makes a great difference in time 
for a mile, being probably equivalent on the average 
to about one and a half seconds. 
1 In Delaware, perhaps in other States also, a kite track which 
is down grade all the way has been constructed. This crowning 
absurdity was accomplished by making the return side of the loop 
end at a lower level than that from which the outgoing side of 
the loop starts. 
2 I have seen lately in a Boston warehouse a skeleton wagon 
that weighs but fifty pounds, and a top buggy that weighs only 
one hundred and twenty-eight pounds. Nancy Hanks’s sulky 
weighs but thirty-eight pounds. Such vehicles might almost be 
described as works of art. 
