Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
281 
THE THOROUGHBRED. 
This animal traces in unbroken lineage to an oriental origin. He 
is created to run; lie is bred expressly to carry a light weight in the 
saddle at great speed, and in this he honors his ancestry. On the 
turf, the racer usually begins his career at two years of age and ends 
it any time before six. In this struggle of precocity, our tardy cli¬ 
mate would be behind the flag, as against the “Sunny South.” For 
harness and every-day work he is generally too light in frame and 
too irritable in disposition; he will not tamely submit to drudgery 
until broken both in body and in spirit. The judgment hereabouts 
is decidedly against thoroughbreds in their purity. Within my 
own recollection they have gradually diminished in numbers, until 
to-day the horse of unmixed blood may be said to have disappeared 
from this vicinity. Whoever tries thorough-breeding in this region , 
will find his colts more rapid than his gains. 
THE TROTTING-HORSK 
has become within a few years almost a distinct type in America. 
By successive and successful selection, on a beginning of Canadian, 
Arab and thorough blood, the aptitude to trot is being bred with 
great and increasing certainty, and we are surely attaining what 
might be called the thoroughbred trotter; not, however, the trot¬ 
ting thoroughbred, which is quite a different thing. This animal 
is all the “go” just now, so much so that it is difficult to find any¬ 
thing slower than a three-minute nag. The princely prices paid 
for accomplished trotters have dazzled everyone, and each is blindly 
grabbing for a prize. Such men as Bonner will have a long score 
to settle sometime in the way of broken bones and broken hopes. 
The scientific breeding, the careful feeding, the cautious breaking, 
the skillful schooling to the gait, are all lost sight of in the sum 
total of thousands. “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,” and 
there may be fun, especially for the boys, in trying to raise a trotter, 
but I fancy for the farmer the crops will be about the same in both 
cases. From first to last the production of the high-priced trotter 
is becoming more and more a profession by itself, and it would be a 
saving thing for agricultural folks to so understand it. 
