ROAD HORSES. — 123 
fast trotting, which is best performed by a peculiar 
and very graceful round motion of the fore legs. Some 
fast trotters have positively high action in front, —so 
high as to seem like a waste of power. This is es- 
pecially true of Allerton, a Wilkes-Mambrino Patchen 
stallion whose record is 2.09}. This excessive action 
is also found in some Morgan strains, especially 
among Sherman Morgan’s descendants. 
Country doctors are great adherents of the Morgan 
horse. “The Morgan,” writes one of this class, “ will 
trot all day, except when ascending a hill. As he ap- 
proaches it, he will raise his head higher and higher. 
First, one pointed ear, then the other, will snap back- 
ward, then forward, as if he were asking permission 
to gallop; and then, if the driver does not object, 
he will lay both ears flat to his head and skim the rise 
like a bird, always striking into the same tireless 
trot when he reaches the summit.” 
It was from a country doctor -—and I trust a vera- 
cious one, for he was my grandfather — that I heard, 
long years ago, the following story. He was driving 
late one very dark night in autumn over a strange 
road. A violent rain had fallen during the preceding 
twenty-four hours, so that the highway was badly 
washed. Presently his horse, a Vermont Morgan, 
made a leap, and crashed through what seemed to be 
the upper branches of a tree, taking the gig after him 
very neatly. This was a little unusual, but still no 
harm had been done. Half a mile or so farther on, 
the horse made another jump: then came a crash and 
a shiver as before, and the gig reeled over another 
tree, as it appeared, poised for a moment on one 
wheel, and righted itself as the horse resumed his 
trot. 
