302.) «W. XH. Brewer—Kvolution of the Trotting-Horse. 
days was a strife between two or more things, as it still is in 
most countries; no one thought that a single horse could run 
a race alone, but the instinctive inclination to see a spirited 
ame to be practised. We hear of it on the Harlem race- 
course in 1806, four years after the laws forbidding horse-racing 
had been enacted, and again, a little later, near Boston, and it 
was réputed that certain horses could trot a mile in three min- 
utes. This speed seemed so extraordinary that in 1818 a bet 
of a thousand dollars was staked (and lost) that no horse could 
be found that could trot a mile in three minutes. Some 
authorities date the beginning of trotting as a sport with this 
event. It is said that in betting the odds against the successful 
performance of the feat were great, which shows, strikingly, the 
horse-racing. Other organizations followed, and by 1830 the 
“training” of trotters was going on at several points, and trot- 
ting may be said to have become established as a sport. During 
this decade the record had been successively lowered to 2.40, 
2.34 and 2.32. The times of performance were carefully taken 
at these “trials of speed,” as the statute called them, and 
‘‘records” became established by more formal sporting codes. 
The ostensible object of these associations was the “ improve- 
of the breed of roadsters;” driving single horses 1 
_ * For more details regarding the history of this development and the factors 
involved, see the paper already cited, Rep. Conn. Bd. Agr. for 1882, p. 215. 
