practical papers—horses. 
303 
Both Jack of Diamonds and Old Diamond were imported by 
Gen. Spotleswood, and both were by Cullen’s Arabian. 
Boston, the best horse of his day, and the sire of Lexington, 
was by Timoleon, Timoleon by Sir Archy, and Sir Archy by 
English Diomed.” 
Now this record from generation to generation has been care¬ 
fully preserved, and is based upon the most trustworthy infor¬ 
mation. It is a piece of horse history, as important in its way as 
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Boman Empire, with this dif¬ 
ference, that it speaks of the rise and progress of a glorious 
animal, who has been an honor to himself and a fortune to his 
owner. 
The apparant ignorance of most people as to what constitutes a 
thoroughbred pedigree—the necessity for its being formed on 
reliable evidence, and not mere guess work and loose say-so, and 
the paramount advantages to come from diligence and truthful¬ 
ness in horse breeding as in other business pursuits, are my 
excuses for presenting the typical case of Lexington’s breeding. 
In the state of Wisconsin, there are probably not twenty horses 
whose thorough breeding can be established, that can show 
authoritatively that they have been bred any number of genera¬ 
tions for the purpose intended, namely, speed at the run. Yet 
every other man has some wonderful animal that was brought up 
from Kentucky during the war, that ran many races, the records 
of which have been destroyed by guerrilas, and the same passes 
current among the neighbors as a thoroughbred. Such an ani¬ 
mal, if it 'have procreative power, is calculated to do infinite 
mischief, and to unsettle the popular belief in that truth in 
breeding, that like begets like, or that a desired quality can be 
fixed in the produce, if bred for persistently for many generations. 
In close connection with the thoroughbred, whose offshoot he 
appears to be, is the trotter. Both are bred for speed, the differ¬ 
ence being simply one of gait. The systematic breeding of the 
latter, however, in this country, has begun within a few years, and 
has not yet been persevered in long enough to impress the fast 
trot in the produce with the same uniformity that we find the gal¬ 
lop in the thoroughbred. Moreover, we have as yet no recog¬ 
nized standard of trotting breeding. Mr. Wallace is engaged in 
