registered Speeds of American Trotting Horses. 311 



3 yards. Therefore at a 2' 30" speed a horse travels through his 

 whole length in a quarter of a second. In an ordinary English race 

 a winner by half a length gains a notable victory, while a neck or 

 even a head in advance is sufficient to establish his priority. There- 

 fore the record of the speed of a horse to the nearest quarter of a 

 second is by no means an absurd refinement, It is, of course, very 

 difficult under the exciting circumstances of a race to measure time 

 with such precision as that. I tested the value of these entries as 

 follows : — If quarter seconds were noted with exactness the entries 

 of 0, ^, -J, and f would be approximately equal in number ; they 

 would also be equal if they were set down at random without bias, 

 but if there be a bias towards favourite numbers its effects would be 

 apparent. I extracted a few hundred entries, and found the rela- 

 tive frequency of the 0, \, ^, and J to be almost exactly as 1, 3, 2, 

 and 1. Consequently the J is on the average three times as great a 

 favourite as either the or the f , and the -J is twice as much a 

 favourite as they are. It is evident that the \ seconds are not 

 strictly trustworthy, but it may well be urged that their entry is 

 preferable to their total disregard. 



I was informed- that a trifling laxity was tolerated when a horse 

 had just but only just failed to qualify, an allowance of \ of a second 

 in his favour being commonly made. So that a speed of 2' 30J" 

 would usually be reckoned as 2' 30". I shall return to this point 

 further on. 



The system of timing and of registering records began more than 

 fifty years ago, and was developed and improved by degrees. In 1892 

 a considerable change was made in the conditions by the introduction 

 of bicycle wheels with pneumatic tyres, which produced a gain of 

 speed, the amount of which is much discussed, but which a prevalent 

 opinion rates at 5 seconds in the mile. Thenceforward the records 

 are comparable on nearly equal terms. All trotting performances 

 up to the 2' 30" standard are registered in the large and closely 

 printed volumes of ' Wallace's Year Book,' published under the 

 authority of the American Trotting Association. Vols. 8 — 12 refer 

 to the years 1892-6, and it is from_the entries in these that the 

 following remarks are based. 



The object of my inquiry was to test the suitability of these 

 trotting (and pacing) records for investigations into the laws of 

 heredity. Their trustworthiness was of course one point to be ascer- 

 tained, another was to obtain a just notion of the proper principle 

 on which marks for speed should be awarded, as, for instance, in the 

 following example : — Suppose a particular ancestor, whom we will 

 call A, of a certain horse has a record of 2' 30", and that another 

 ancestor in the same degree, whom we will call B. has a record of 

 2' 10", how are their joint influences to be estimated ? Will it be the 



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