THE AMERICAN TROTTING HORSE. 485 



and inherits but one-thirty-second part of Morgan blood. His trot- 

 ting quality is inherited almost entirely from Messenger, as is that 

 of nearly all other trotting horses in this country. 



Gen. Knox stood most of his life in Maine, where there are 

 Beveral other good trotting families with which he was bred, though 

 it does not appear that he ever had bred to him any mares distin- 

 guished for speed until he entered the stud at Fashion Stud Farm. 

 Considering these circumstances it is remarkable that he should 

 have so very many fast descendants. His sons are very successful 

 as sires, but his daughters have not produced any trotters that have 

 appeared in public. 



One more family of great distinction remains to be mentioned. 

 Ethan Allen was a small bay horse, foaled in New York State in 

 1849. He was very handsome, trotted among the fastest, and 

 begot trotters. He retained his vigor to a great age, and died on 

 the Stud Farm of Sprague and Akers, Leavenworth, Kansas, in 

 1876. His sire was the renowned Vermont Black Hawk, and his 

 dam was believed to be a daughter of Freeman's Messenger. His 

 most distinguished son, as a stock horse, is Daniel Lambert, out of 

 an Abdallah mare. Several of his other sons have begotten fast 

 trotters. 



The fame of this family is chiefly perpetuated by the male mem- 

 bers of it. The daughters of the old horse have not so nearly 

 failed to produce trotters as the Hambletonians and the Knoxes, 

 but they are not in any great demand as brood mares. The sons 

 of the old horse, or some of them, may beget marcs that will rival 

 the Abdallah, the American Star, the Harry Clay, and the Mam- 

 brino Chief Mares as producers. This peculiar hereditary trait — 

 of the successful progenitors of a family being on one or the other 

 side of the sexual line — is not permanent, but may change in a 

 single generation, as in the case of the daughters of Abdallah, and 

 the daughters of Abdallah's son — Hambletonian. 



There are many good trotting foal getters in the country that 

 have not been mentioned here. They are members of the families 

 described, and often combine the blood of two or more trotting 

 families; or they are collaterally related and derive their quality 

 from the same original sources. Most of them are too modern to 

 have established families yet, and it is not within the scope or 

 limits of this essay to instruct the reader in facts so much as in 

 principles. 



There is a very prevalent opinion that trotters are chance horses, 

 and that there is no certainty in breeding for them. So prevalent 

 was this opinion a few years ago, that then trotters were chance 

 horses; no well-directed effort was made to produce the desired 

 result, by applying the same principles of breeding that had 



