history and horse achievements, the more importance he attaches to
the word “thoroughbred;” and of all the millions and millions of lies
that have been told about pedigrees nine-tenths have been concocted
and circulated for the one purpose of enhancing the supposed value of
the animal by claiming “thoroughbred” blood. The “instinct” to lie
about pedigrees, so common among certain classes of horsemen, seems to
be “the sum of inherited habits” that has come down from generation
to generation. If you ask one of these mendacious gentlemen whether
American Eclipse was a thoroughbred he will answer, with a strong marked
expression of contempt and pity for your ignorance on his countenance,
“Certainly he was thoroughbred.” If you then ask him about his pedigree
he will answer, “I don’t know anything about his pedigree.” Then you
venture to ask how he knows he was thoroughbred if he does not know
anything about his pedigree, and he will squelch you completely by
saying, “No horse not thoroughbred could ever have done what American
Eclipse did.” Here we get at the real basis of the universal mendacity
on this subject. The preacher wrote a great book called “The Perfect
Horse” in which he maintained that the Morgan Horse was thoroughbred.
The lawyer wrote another great book on “The American Roadster” in which
he maintained that Dexter was a thoroughbred. With two gentlemen of
intelligence and education writing such miserable stuff, what are we to
expect from the masses?
Now here is the horse American Eclipse, the greatest horse of his day
in his racing achievements, that in his blood is very far from being
“thoroughbred,” under any rule that has ever been suggested or devised.
Now, with this taint on his escutcheon, it follows that no one of his
descendants for at least five generations can be classed as thoroughbred.
As a progenitor, Eclipse cannot be considered a great horse, either in
his immediate or more remote descendants. Medoc was about his best, and
he was better than his sire. Another son, called Monmouth Eclipse, was
grandly bred on the side of his dam, was sold, it was said, for fifteen
thousand dollars for stock purposes, and proved a most lamentable
failure, never having got a colt that was worth fifteen dollars as a
race horse. The great fame of American Eclipse, therefore, rested upon
what were then designated as “his mighty achievements upon the turf.”
A reasonably complete history of this horse may be found in _Wallace’s
Monthly_ for March, 1877, p. 160. His great race against Henry, in which
he represented the North as against the South, was doubtless the most
memorable turf event that ever took place on this continent, and a very
brilliant description of it will be found at the reference given above.
This race of four-mile heats took place on the Union Course, Long Island,
May, 1823, for twenty thousand dollars a side, and it was, in effect,
Eclipse against the world. Eclipse, fit or not fit, must start, while his
opponents had several prepared to start against him and all they had to
determine was to select the fastest and best of the whole party. At the
last hour Henry was chosen as the champion of the South, and he won the
first heat by about a length in 7:37½. A change was made in the rider
of Eclipse and he won the second heat by about two lengths in 7:49. In
the third heat the instructions to the rider of Henry were not to hurry
the gait, but to trail to near the finish and then pull out and win in
a rush. The rider of Eclipse understood the tactics of the enemy and he
hurried the pace every step of the way, in order to tire out his younger
opponent. When near the finish Henry made his dash and covered Eclipse’s
quarter with his head, but he could get no further and abandoned the
contest. Eclipse had been punished unmercifully from start to finish, and
the time of the heat was 8:24. This shows an average rate of speed in the
third heat of two minutes and six seconds to the mile, a rate which half
a dozen trotters and a round dozen of pacers have beaten for a single
mile. It shows also the cruelty, to say nothing of the absurdity, of heat
racing at the distance of four miles. Still American Eclipse was the
greatest running horse of his generation.
BOSTON was a chestnut horse, foaled 1833, and bred by Mr. John Wickham,
the very eminent jurist, of Richmond, Virginia. He succeeded to the
great fame of American Eclipse, and although about two generations, in
a racing sense, after him there was no horse between them that was the
equal of either of them. He was a terror to all competitors whether of
the North or the South. But it is only my purpose here to put on record
the real facts about his pedigree and to expose a glaring fraud that has
been propagated concerning his breeding for many years. Mr. Wickham, the
breeder of Boston, bought a mare by imported Alderman (1802 or 1803) from
John Randolph, of Tuckahoe (not “Roanoke” as sometimes stated). This mare
was out of a mare by imported Clockfast, and here, to sum it up and give
Mr. Wickham’s exact language, as he wrote in 1827: “This mare, a dark
bay, foaled about 1799, was got by Alderman, her dam by Clockfast, out
of a mare said to be full-blooded, of the Wildair blood.” This Alderman
mare he bred to Florizel, and she produced the race horse Tuckahoe, and
a filly that was bred to Timoleon and produced Boston. Then Boston’s
pedigree stands; Got by Timoleon; dam by Florizel; grandam by imported
Alderman; great-grandam by imported Clockfast; great-great-grandam “said
to be of the Wildair blood.” This is down to “hard pan,” and there is
no authority in the wide world to add anything to it. If we admit the
Wildair mare to be genuine and authentic we are still one degree short
of the thoroughbred standard. The six additional crosses that have been
added to this pedigree are entirely fictitious. They were copied from the
advertisement of a stallion descended from this maternal line, that had
neither indorsement nor name attached to it. This was seized upon by the
late Benjamin Bruce, and boasted of as a “discovery” of the extension
of Boston’s pedigree. After the appearance of this advertisement Mr.
Wickham prepared and published a full list of his stock, with their
pedigrees, from the first of his breeding operations, and when he
reached the Wildair mare he stopped, just as I have stopped at that
point. Here we have the two authorities—Mr. John Wickham, distinguished
for his eminent character as a man and a jurist; or a nameless stallion
advertisement without any shadow of truth or responsibility.
Timoleon, the sire of Boston, was one of the most distinguished sons of
the great Sir Archy, his dam was by imported Saltram, and his grandam by
Wildair, but beyond that the pedigree is a hopeless muddle, embracing
some features that are absolutely impossible.
TOM BOWLING AND AARON PENNINGTON.—The first of these horses was by
Lexington, the second was by Tipperary, son of Ringgold, and they
were both out of Lucy Fowler, by imported Albion, grandam-by imported
Leviathan, great-grandam by Top Gallant, great-great-grandam Eli Odom’s
saddle mare, which means, in that country, she was a pacer. Tom Bowling
was probably the best race horse of his year, and Pennington may be
classed as mediocre, but as the latter is credited with some pacers or
trotters that have come within the 2:30 list, his pedigree becomes of
interest on this account. I will, therefore, give the facts in some
detail, which go to show the truth about what the pedigree contains and
what it does not contain.
In 1869 the late William R. Elliston, of Nashville, Tennessee, furnished
me the following facts, which he obtained personally from Mr. Eli Odom.
It was very fortunate that Mr. Elliston obtained these facts when he
did, for Mr. Odom was advanced in years and died not long afterward.
He was a brother-in-law of the once very famous breeder and race horse
man, Colonel Elliott, of Tennessee, and in early life had charge of his
establishment and knew more about Colonel Elliott’s stock than he did
himself. He lived to old age, highly respected by all who knew him, and
was a man of truth. He kept for his own use a pacing saddle mare whose
blood he knew nothing about, and he bred her to Top Gallant, son of
Gallatin, and the produce was a filly. This filly he bred to imported
Leviathan, and in due time there came another filly which he bred to
imported Albion, and the next filly was Lucy Fowler. This filly passed
through the hands of a Mr. Fowler and perhaps one or two others, and at
last became the property of Price McGrath, of Lexington, Kentucky, and
was the dam of Tom Bowling, Aaron Pennington and others. Starting in
with the pacing mare, Mr. Odom bred all that followed until we reach
Lucy Fowler, and there we find she had seven parts of running blood and
one part of pacing blood. While an animal bred in this way is certainly
not “thoroughbred,” nobody can deny that he is “running-bred,” for
there are hundreds of instances on record where animals of even shorter
pedigrees than Tom Bowling have been noted race horses. But there is
another fact connected with this family that is very interesting. When
the running qualities of Pennington were exhausted, McGrath presented
him to a kinsman of his, somewhere in Western Missouri. After awhile I
began to hear of an occasional trotter from this horse and I wrote his
owner (whose name I cannot now recall), and he replied that “he went all
the saddle gaits and was a pacer.” Here was a tidbit that I thought well
worth looking after, and I wrote the owner again for specific information
of the character of his pace and whether it was a clean and pronounced
side action, but for some reason or other I never was able to get a reply
to my questions. There can be no mistake about his going the “saddle
gaits,” but whether this was the result of training or whether he took to
them naturally as inherited from Mr. Odom’s old pacing mare, is a point
about which I have never been fully satisfied.
GREY EAGLE (CHENERY’S).—When Mr. Winthrop W. Chenery, of Boston, bought
this horse, about 1866, he got with him the following pedigree.
“Got by Grey Eagle; dam by imp. Trustee; g. d. by Columbus; g.
g. d. by Stockholder; g. g. g. d. by Pacolet. Bred in Kentucky,
and passed through many vicissitudes, both as a runner and a
trotter, beating his competitors at both gaits; owned for a
time in Ohio, now the property of Winthrop W. Chenery & Co.,
Boston.”
This was a correct type of the pedigrees of that time, lacking date,
location, breeder and all other things necessary to trace and determine
its value. The horse had certainly trotted in 2:31, and he had trotted
two miles to wagon in 5:09½, and to this evidence of his trotting ability
it was claimed that he had run and won many races at all distances. This
was such a combination of abilities as I never had heard of before, and
in attempting to solve the riddle I became deeply interested. The search
then instituted has been kept up ever since, and I must say that after
all these years I know absolutely nothing about the breeding of this
horse. His first known owner was a petty gambler and general outlaw in
the neighborhood of Portsmouth, Ohio, and the story he told will be found
in _Wallace’s Monthly_, Vol. I., p. 53, and Vol. VII., p. 597, besides
other references. The search has been so barren that I have not even the
shadow of a theory as to what his blood may have been. He got two or
three trotters and one or two pacers, I think, and here we have to leave
him as the most completely unknown horse in all my experience.
GEORGE WILKES.—It is a grievous misfortune that the pedigree of this
great progenitor should be in doubt. The misfortune is not in the fact
that his descendants lose the supposed Clay cross in his dam, for that
was not of very great value, but in the fact that we should not know just
what belongs in its place. In December, 1877, I had the good fortune to
meet with Mr. Harry Felter and Mr. William L. Simmons at a breeders’
banquet, and it was not long until we were in conversation about the
blood of the dam of George Wilkes. I knew that the breeding of that horse
had never been established, but I was greatly surprised that these two
gentlemen—one the breeder and the other the owner of Wilkes—had never
made any effort to trace and establish so important a fact. Mr. Felter
stated that he had bought the mare from Mr. W. A. Delevan, and that Mr.
Delevan had bought her from Mr. Joseph S. Lewis, of Geneva, New York.
Thereupon I wrote to Mr. Lewis and the following is his response:
“Some twenty-six years since I bought a brown mare from a
gentleman by the name of James Gilbert, then living in the town
of Phelps, in this county, for a friend, and very soon after
sold her to W. A. Delevan, of New York. She was then about five
years old, a fine roadster, and could speed in about 3:30. He
took her to New York, and after driving her some time sold
her to my esteemed friend, Harry Felter. I think she passed
into the hands of his father, and met with an accident. She
was put to breeding, and had a colt by Rysdyk’s Hambletonian,
that grew up to be the famous George Wilkes. For the benefit
of many persons in New York I lost no time in looking about to
learn the pedigree of the mare and of the horse that got her.
On seeing Gilbert I learned that he got the mare of an old man
who is now dead, by the name of Josiah Philips, of Bristol,
in this county. I lost no time in sending a man, who lived
with us at the time, by the name of John S. Dey, to Bristol,
to get all the facts in the mare’s pedigree that he could get
hold of. He learned through Philips that the father of this
mare was the old Wadsworth Henry Clay, owned for many years by
General Wadsworth, of Genesee. There is no mistake about this,
as I have since learned from his neighbors that she was a Clay
colt. Philips further stated that the mother of the mare was
got by a horse called Highlander, a good horse, and owned in
that section of country. I have no doubt about this, as there
was such a horse in that section about that time. When I go
to Buffalo, where Gilbert now lives, I may be able to get at
more facts in regard to your inquiry, and if I can get hold of
anything that will give more light on the subject before I am
down in New York, I will drop into your office to see you.
Very truly yours, etc.
“J. S. LEWIS.”
The receipt of this letter, so straightforward and clean-cut in its
statements, developed a mystery that was incomprehensible to me. Dates,
names, places, circumstances, all stand out as evidences of the truth
of the representations, and also as evidences that Mr. Lewis had fully
investigated the matter, and given the results of his investigations
to his friends in this city; still, those friends had never heard the
facts, or had entirely forgotten them. As there was a strong prejudice
against Clay blood in certain quarters, it occurred to me that possibly
that cross had been left in abeyance so long that it really had been
forgotten. This did not clear up the mystery, however, and I determined
to have the whole matter investigated from a different starting point. I
submitted the matter to Mr. John P. Ray, a very capable and very honest
man, and he kindly and without reward undertook the investigation. The
Philips family lived in the vicinity of Bristol, and the first of the
family met by Mr. Ray was Mr. E. V. Philips, nephew and adopted son of
Joshua Philips (not Josiah, as Mr. Lewis had it), and he enumerated
several head of Clays that had been owned by his uncle Joshua, among them
a mare that was bred by Mr. Clark Philips, bought of him when a yearling
by E. V. Philips, sold as a four-year-old to his uncle Joshua, and by him
the next year to “some man from the eastern part of the country.” He next
met Mr. Clark Philips, who fully confirmed E. V. Philips about the Clay
filly already referred to and said she was got when old Henry Clay was
owned by Kent and Bailey of Bristol, and that her dam was “Old Telegraph”
by Highlander, etc. In his original report to me of his investigation Mr.
Ray uses the following language:
“When Henry Clay was being brought from the East to his home in
Western New York, he stopped one night at the hotel then kept
in Bristol by Dr. Durgan, deceased (the breeder of Castle Boy),
and made a season at this place the following year, when he
became the property of Kent & Bailey. He was kept in that town
for several years, etc.”
Now, as between the original and voluntary statement of Captain Lewis
and the investigation carried through by Mr. Ray, there is no conflict
and all is smooth sailing, and upon the information derived from these
two sources the pedigree of George Wilkes was decided as established
by the Board of Censors. But more recent discoveries made by Mr. Ray,
in which I have no doubt he is thoroughly conscientious and possibly
thoroughly right, have raised a conflict that is irrepressible, for dates
are involved and insisted upon that make the pedigree impossible. In his
original statement Mr. Ray says that Henry Clay made the season of 1846
at Bristol, “when he became the property of Kent & Bailey. He was kept in
that town for some years.” Up to this point there is no contradiction and
no impossibility; Ray agrees with Lewis and Lewis agrees with Ray. But in
the past two or three years Mr. Ray believes he has secured additional
information, and this places Captain Lewis in a very unenviable position.
The whole point of Clark Philips’ evidence is that he bred his mare “Old
Telegraph” to Henry Clay when that horse was owned by Bailey Brothers,
of Bristol, and I suppose they were the successors of Kent & Bailey of
an earlier date. Now, as Mr. Ray told us in his first investigation that
Henry Clay passed into the hands of Kent & Bailey in 1847, and as he
tells us later that he did not pass into their hands till nine or ten
years after that date and then fails to fix the precise year, it must
be conceded by all that his information is not wholly satisfactory.
Recollections may be ever so honest, but they are of various degrees
of reliability. The best and final evidence is the service book of the
horse. My best judgment of the whole matter is that Mr. Ray’s later
information is probably correct, but until all doubt is removed by the
production of some contemporaneous record covering the case there must
remain an element of uncertainty attaching to the pedigree.
CHAPTER XXXI.
HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED.
Early trotting and pacing races—Strains of blood in the
first known trotters —The lesson of Maud S.—The genesis of
trotting-horse literature—The simple study of inheritance—The
different forms of heredity—The famous quagga story not
sustained—Illustrations in dogs—Heredity of acquired characters
and instincts—Development of successive generations necessary
—Unequaled collections of statistics—Acquired injuries and
unsoundness transmitted.
As preparatory to taking up the consideration of the breeding problem,
it may be well to look back a little and see what had transpired in the
trotting-horse world, leading up to the serious consideration of how
he was bred. It has been generally accepted as true that there were no
trotting contests in this country till about the second decade of the
present century, but this impression has grown out of the fact that the
newspapers, down to that period, failed to report such contests. It
is historically true that pacing races were a common amusement among
the people of different portions of the colonies nearly two hundred
years ago. This is established by the legislative action of some of
the colonies, in the first half of the last century, in suppressing
all “pacing and trotting races.” It is well to note, in passing, that
pacers and trotters of that early period were commingled, just as they
are to-day, with the former the more prominent, and the more highly
prized. Of that hundred years of silence we have no details and but few
historical references that were contemporaneous with the events. Hence we
are practically dependent upon the legislative action of the colonies to
establish the truth beyond question.
When we reach the period when the newspapers began to report some of the
more conspicuous and important trotting events about Philadelphia and New
York, we find a condition of things for which we are hardly prepared. The
pacer has lost his prominence and is but little in evidence, and all the
best trotters seem to be descended from the imported horse Messenger.
The best performers of that period were as follows:
Topgallant
Paul Pry
Dutchman
Jersey Fagdown
Commander (Bull)
Gipsy
Bull Calf
Lady Warrenton
Betsy Baker
Sir Peter
Screwdriver
Chancellor
Whalebone
Lady Suffolk
Andrew Jackson
Fanny Pullen
Washington
Sally Miller
Greenwich Maid
Charlotte Temple
Confidence
Rattler
Lady Salisbury
Modesty
These were all descended from Messenger, and with the exception of Edwin
Forrest and one or two others, believed to be descended from pacing
blood, they were the leading performers of their day. All of the above
animals were not equally strong in Messenger blood as three of them
were by sons and out of daughters of Messenger, five were by sons of
Messenger, and all the others had more or less of his blood. More than
eighty years ago the descendants of Messenger, wherever known, were
recognized as a family of trotters and this broad fact became a kind
of universal belief among horsemen. This belief, being founded on a
truth, was all right, but a plausible deduction from it, which was not
a truth, inflicted a terrible penalty upon the pockets of otherwise
intelligent men for a period of more than fifty years before they
discovered their error. The postulate was in this form: “Messenger was
a thoroughbred horse and founded a great family of trotters, hence,
any other thoroughbred horse, under the same conditions, would have
accomplished the same results.” This “stock” form of the argument was
plausible and it was in everybody’s mouth from one end of the land to
the other. Every stable boy, every breeder, every editor believed the
deduction was sound, and, I may as well own it, I believed it myself
until I had gathered together all the accessible trotting statistics of
this country and reduced them to order and method, so that they might be
studied and their true teachings be drawn from them. As an illustration
of the ignorant intolerance and dishonesty with which certain editors and
their followers maintained, less than twenty years ago, that all that
was of any value in the trotter was inherited from the runner, take the
following: In the autumn of 1878 the famous Maud S., then four years old,
came out and trotted a mile in 2:17½, which was then a world’s wonder.
She was a pacer of the plastic type, but she had to wear toe-weights
through all her brilliant career to keep her on her gait as a trotter.
Everybody was astounded at this phenomenal performance and went wild over
it as something that had never been done before, by a four-year-old,
and probably never would be done again. On this performance I simply
remarked, in the _Monthly_:
“Her trotting inheritance is very strong and well defined on
both sides of the house, and she has a right to trot, and trot
fast, and her 2:17½ shows that she trots instinctively, and
without much training; and in this she is phenomenal. She is
simply a little in advance of her time; for no truth is more
fully sustained by analogy and reason than that, in a few
generation of judicious selections, such mares will not be
phenomenal.”
From this four-year-old record of 2:17½ in 1878, we pass on to the
two-year-old record of 2:10¾ in 1891. A four-year-old now trotting
in 2:17½ is only commonplace. It was not a gift of “prophecy” nor an
overwrought enthusiasm, therefore, that enabled me to determine that
2:17½ for a four-year-old would become commonplace, but a study of the
laws of breeding in the light of all past trotting experiences. When
this performance was made the late B. G. Bruce, of Lexington, Kentucky,
then editor of a sporting paper, went into ecstasies over it and was at
once able to show, to his own mind, that it was all owing to the running
blood in Maud S. that enabled her to show phenomenal speed. He figured
this all out and showed that she possessed eleven-sixteenths of what he
called “pure blood,” to five-sixteenths of what he called “cold blood.”
In winding up his article, he says:
“In conclusion we deem it evident from her form and action that
the great power of Maud S. comes from her pure blood; that her
breeding back on the form and action, courage and endurance
of the blood horse is the very reason why she is so superior
to all four-year-olds that have ever appeared. And another
point is obvious: the pure blood matures so much earlier than
the cold blood that years are gained in development over the
cold-blooded trotter.”
Now instead of Maud S. possessing eleven-sixteenths of “pure blood,” as
claimed by Mr. Bruce, it has never been shown and never can be shown that
she possessed one single drop of “pure blood.” When Sally Russell, the
grandam of Maud S., was sold to Mr. R. A. Alexander, she was sold under
a fraudulent pedigree, and when Pilot Jr. was sold to Mr. Alexander an
utterly impossible pedigree was manufactured for him. In both cases he
was the victim of sharpers, for in his life and character he stood away
above all suspicion. The pedigrees of Pilot Jr. and Sally Russell have
been fully considered in Chapter XXIX. of this volume.
After publishing “The American Stud Book” in 1867, and the first volume
of the “Trotting Register” in 1871, and having carefully compiled all
past trotting races and trotting experiences, up to the close of 1872,
it began to dawn upon me that possibly I had been handling a great many
fictions and thereby given them an indorsement to the world as truths.
This “gave me pause,” as well as many a sleepless night and anxious day.
The old adage, “What everybody says must be true,” gave me no comfort,
for I had just found that Mr. “Everybody” was a great liar. Then a higher
and purer maxim suggested itself to my mind, “One, with the truth on his
side, is a majority,” and under this banner I enlisted for the war which
I knew was coming. Having compiled the pedigrees of all running horses
and all trotting horses, so far as known, up to 1870, and more especially
having gathered up all past trotting experiences and statistics, I felt
that I was equipped to enter the lists with everybody against me. I knew
I was liable to meet antagonists on every side, and some of them of
great ability, but at the same time I knew they had neither the armor
of truth nor the weapons of facts at their command. Mere prejudices and
the limping opinions that spring from them have no force in an earnest
combat. The platform upon which I stood was aggressive, but simple and
easily comprehended, viz., “The English horse Messenger, in his own right
and by his own power, founded a family of trotters—something which no
other English horse had ever been able to take the first step toward
accomplishing.” This was the central point around which the battle
raged, and to it I added the pacer as a subsidiary or minor source of
speed, equally certain in fact, but not equally well defined in lines
of descent, nor equally important in numbers and value. From these
major and minor sources it is literally true that all our trotters have
descended. In confirmation of this, a very capable and careful writer in
the New York _Sun_, within the past few months, has said: “Hambletonian
is the progenitor of ninety per cent. of the fast trotters now on the
turf.” When we start with Hambletonian, the triple great-grandson of
Messenger, we are safely within the period of records of both blood and
performances, and we are relieved from some possible uncertainties in
the earlier period of Messenger himself, hence the writer quoted above
is at bed-rock in the sources of his information. This makes my major
proposition so plain and so triumphantly sustained that it is doubtful
whether there is now living an intelligent horseman who would even think
of disputing it.
In the spring of 1872 I wrote a series of articles under the caption
of “How shall we breed the Trotting Horse?” which was published in the
_Spirit of the Times_ in February and March of that year. These papers
were revised and enlarged and published, as an introductory treatise on
breeding the trotter, in the second volume of the “American Trotting
Register.” This treatise is the genesis of all discussions in which the
laws governing the breeding of the trotter are considered. Up to that
period contributions to the press on breeding subjects were generally
transient and confined to the writer’s own experience. If he was trying
to breed trotters a comparison of his material always corresponded with
his arguments, and the only thing he demonstrated was his own inability
to see over the fence surrounding his own paddocks. I love a man who
loves his horse, and, as a man, I cannot dislike him because he thinks
his horse is the very acme of all equine perfection, although he may be
a worthless, brute; but when a man spends a whole lifetime in trying to
breed trotters from blood that cannot trot, I lose all respect for his
mental operations. The man who cannot widen out and take profit from
the demonstrated experiences of the whole trotting world, had better
turn his attention to some business suited to his capacity. Not a single
thought advanced nor a position taken in the article referred to has ever
been successfully controverted, although they excited much opposition.
An attempt was made to laugh the phrase “trotting instinct” out of
court, but that little phrase not only held the fortress, but became,
as it were, the basis of the whole system of thought represented in the
treatise. It had a meaning and a fitness in what it meant that put it in
everybody’s mouth, and there it stays for all time. Instinct is “the sum
of inherited habits;” and these five words express the best practical
definition of its meaning that I have ever met with.
THE LAWS THAT GOVERN.—In all animal life the resemblance of the offspring
to the parents is the universal law. The law is not only true in the
physical conformation of the offspring, but it is also true in the
mentality and instinctivity of the offspring. In former years it was
very aptly termed the law of inheritance, but the more general usage is
now the law of heredity. In casting about for a definition of this newly
coined word, I have not been able to find anything more comprehensive and
expressive than that given by Ribot, in the opening sentence of his work
on this subject. He says:
“Heredity is that biological law by which all beings endowed
with life tend to repeat themselves in their descendants; it is
for the species what personal identity is for the individual.
By it a groundwork remains unchanged amid incessant variation;
by it Nature ever copies and imitates herself.”
This has been the law ever since the command went forth, “Let the earth
bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing
and beast of the earth after his kind.” Hence sprang the varieties,
species, genera and orders into which naturalists have sought to classify
the animal kingdom. In generations long past our ancestors used such
phrases as “Like father, like son,” “Trot father, trot mother, trot
colt,” “Like begets like,” etc., meaning just what we mean to-day by the
word “heredity.” While heredity is a universal law of animal life, it
must be remembered that its results cannot be pre-determined by any rule
of arithmetic. Every colt has a sire and a dam, four grandparents, eight
great-grandparents, and then sixteen, and next thirty-two progenitors.
Here we have five generations embracing sixty-two different animals, and
the experiences of many years have gone to show that if these sixty-two
animals are all purely bred in the breed which you are seeking to secure
there is a reasonable certainty that your prospective colt will be a
good representative of that breed. By this I mean that with this number
of generations there is but little danger of your colt following some
undesirable type outside of and beyond these five generations. The only
way to study this problem intelligently and with satisfaction is to
tabulate the pedigrees of the two animals you propose to couple and then
study each individual of the different generations and see what each one
has done in the direction you are breeding. If you are breeding for a
Derby winner you want every one of the sixty-two to have proved himself
or herself a first-class runner, and you don’t want a single drop of
outside blood in any of them. If you are breeding for the two-minute
trotter, you don’t want any blood but the fastest trotting blood. If you
are breeding for the two-minute pacer you want nothing but the fastest
pacing blood. But, possibly you may be breeding for size, style, and
beauty, and in that case you must be particularly careful to have your
tabulation full of animals possessing these qualifications. In times past
many breeders have been led to their own hurt in making ill-considered
attempts at improvement by mating animals of antagonistic instincts. The
fast runner and the fast trotter have nothing in common between them in
the way of gait. In physical structure there may be no antagonism that we
can see, but in mental or psychical structure there is nothing but what
is inharmonious. Each animal and each line of blood must be considered
as it stands separate from the other, and the question must be not only
asked but answered: “What has this line of blood done in its own right
and by its own power?”
In studying these tabulations it certainly is not necessary to remind any
thinking man of the comparative value of near and remote individuals.
The first and second generations are the important factors in the
character and value of the proposed colt, and, as a rule, the four
grandparents are not given that weight in making up a sound judgment
to which they are entitled. A tabulated pedigree may show a general
equality or average goodness all over, in the direction we are looking;
although it may embrace but few stars it is not a pedigree that should
be hastily rejected. The student should never lose sight of the truth
that bad qualities are just as certain to be transmitted as good ones.
Bad feet, bad limbs, bad eyes and bad respiration should be sufficient
cause for prompt rejection. Derangement or unhealthiness of the internal
viscera or any of them is just as likely to be transmitted as an external
malformation or disease.
In some instances the qualities sought seem to emanate entirely from the
sire or the dam, and this prepotency seems to appear more frequently as
the work of the sire than of the dam, perhaps because the opportunities
are greater in the number of services. Thousands of stallions have failed
to get trotters out of running-bred mares, but as many as you could count
on the fingers of one hand, probably, have succeeded in a few instances.
Of these Pilot Jr., Almont and Electioneer occur to me at this time as
the most prominent. These horses, so far as we know the lines of their
blood, were strictly trotting and pacing bred, with no tincture of
running blood in their veins. On a certain occasion Senator Stanford
wished to demonstrate to the writer that Electioneer could get trotters
out of running-bred mares, and after showing the step of the famous Palo
Alto, he remarked: “None of my other stallions can do that. Electioneer
alone has the power to get trotters out of some thoroughbred mares, but
not all.” This ability to get a trotter out of a running mare is the
highest test to which the prepotency of a trotting sire can be put, as is
shown by the very small number that have ever succeeded.
DIRECT HEREDITY.—While it is true that all inheritance must come through
the parents, it is also true that phenomena of form, character and
quality are not infrequently presented that the parents do not seem to
possess, and upon looking further we find those phenomena in some of the
more remote ancestors. When we find the character of the offspring a
practical reproduction of one or both the parents, we designate this as a
case of “direct heredity” merely for the convenience of description and
elucidation. Ideal or perfect heredity never has been reached and never
will be. There are two sources to the life of the new being, and each
of these sources is made up of never-ending variations. There may seem
to be a very complete coalescence of the elements of the sire and dam
in the foal, but it is not like either of them and yet it may resemble
both. A mere physical resemblance to a great sire is no evidence that the
colt will be equally great. I have seen many of the sons of the great
Hambletonian, and among them all the one that bore the strongest physical
resemblance to him was of the least value, either as a performer or a
progenitor. Hambletonian left many great sons behind him, some of them
even greater than himself, and while they all possessed certain family
characteristics, I cannot recall a single one that strikingly resembled
him in his physical conformation. From this incident, as well as a
thousand other similar ones, we cannot avoid the conclusion that heredity
controls the whole animal, man or beast, in his mental as well as in his
physical constitution.
CROSS HEREDITY is one of the forms of direct heredity, and is not very
well exemplified in trotting experiences, nor very valuable in the
lessons it is supposed to teach. In its first form it embraces instances
where the character of the sire is transmitted to his daughters and the
character of the dam is transmitted to her sons. Long ago I established
a table in the “Year Book” to embrace the sires of mares that produced
two or more animals in the 2:30 list, but had failed to place any
representative there from their own loins. The development of this table
simply showed an array of sires that were not able to get 2:30 trotters,
but when their daughters were bred to horses of stronger inheritance,
horses indeed that were able to get trotters from almost any kind of
mares, they produced foals that came within the circle. This was a
grandsire’s table and depended upon second causes, that is, the horses
that gave it life occupied secondary positions in it, and it presented
but little that was of value to the student of horse history. In the
discussion of this particular form of heredity the books are filled up
with instances of vicious fathers begetting vicious daughters and vicious
mothers producing vicious sons, with more or less uncertainty as to the
individual origin of the parties in question.
INDIRECT AND COLLATERAL HEREDITY.—When a child or a colt does not
resemble its parents, but “takes after” the grandfather or some more
remote ancestor, it is said to be a case of atavism, or indirect or
collateral heredity. Twenty years ago I visited, by appointment, a
branch of my family at the old homestead of my great-grandfather, on
the maternal side. There never had been any knowledge of each other or
intercourse between these two branches of the family. On arriving at my
destination I was warmly greeted by a gentleman who came forward from
the crowd and named me. As there were a good number of people alighting
from the train at the same time I asked my cousin how he knew me, and he
replied that I bore such a striking resemblance to my grandfather that
at a single glance he could have picked me out of a hundred men. This
grandfather was the father of my mother and he died when I was a small
boy. But there was a still greater surprise awaiting me. My kinsman was
an intelligent man of excellent sense, and during the few days I spent
in his family he was to me a most interesting study. In a hundred ways
he reminded me of my brother, not in resemblance of face, for there was,
practically, no resemblance; but in the action of his mind, in his way of
putting things, and especially in his unstudied and peculiar gestures of
his hands in conversation, the one seemed to be a perfect reproduction
of the other. They were both born and reared on farms, they were both
heads of families, and they were both elders in the Presbyterian church.
The one was the third and the other the fourth remove from their common
progenitor. I have read carefully descriptions of many cases of mental
heredity, but this case, coming under my own observation and deliberate
study, seemed to be more thoroughly convincing than any or all others.
The fact that certain qualities may lie dormant through several
generations and then be unexpectedly developed was well known to the
ancients more than two thousand years ago. Plutarch mentions a Greek
woman who gave birth to a negro child and was brought to trial for
adultery, but it was discovered that she was descended in the fourth
degree from an Ethiopian. Montaigne expresses his astonishment at this,
and remarks:
“Is it not marvelous that this drop of seed from which we are
produced should bear the impression, not only of the bodily
form, but even the thoughts and inclinations of our fathers?
Where does this drop of water keep its infinite number of
forms? How does it bear these likenesses through a progress
so haphazard and so irregular that the great-grandson shall
resemble the great-grandfather, the nephew the uncle?”
The most prolific and satisfactory sources of evidence in support of
indirect or reversionary heredity are to be found in the crosses between
the white and the black races. They abound in all quarters wherever the
two races are to be found, and many a proud family has been humbled
to the dust when the long-concealed “black drop” makes its unexpected
appearance. There are hundreds of such cases in the world, and it is
impossible to make even an approximation of the number of generations
that would be required to wash out the stain.
HEREDITY OF INFLUENCE.—When the subject of “How to Breed the Trotting
Horse” was in its infancy there was a wonderful amount of mystery
about it. Nobody could understand why one horse of the same general
conformation should not trot just as fast as another. When it was found
that this way of looking at the problem would not meet the facts, one
thought it was owing to the length of certain bones, another that it
was all in the hind quarters, another that it was “the trotting pitch,”
another that it was “a happy nick,” etc. When it was all made plain that
a horse was able to trot fast because his ancestors were able to trot
fast, the seekers for the mysterious had nothing left that suited their
taste but the effects of first impregnations, resting on Lord Morton’s
story of the quagga and the mare, which is here dignified with the title
“Heredity of Influence.” Now, just how “influence,” two or three years
after the event, should become a controlling factor in the paternity of
a colt, is a mystery sufficiently profound to satisfy our friends of
earlier years, so intent upon finding something mysterious. For about
three-quarters of a century the story, coming from so reputable a source,
has been cited in many scientific bodies and accepted by many scientific
men and writers without a question or doubt. No writer, so far as I know,
has ever attempted to controvert it, and if the facts be well founded
it demolishes in its conclusions all the laws of generation, to say
nothing of the universal law of heredity. The point to be considered is,
whether the first impregnation influences the offspring of subsequent
and different impregnations. In other words, whether the children of a
widow by her second husband will partake of the characteristics of her
first husband. Ribot says “that from the psychological point of view, we
are skeptical in regard to this form of heredity. The fact seems to be
perfectly out of the order of things.” He then goes on to consider it as
though it might be true, and cites any number of the veriest fables in
support of it, without ever stopping to inquire whether they have any
foundation of truth. In every assemblage of breeders brought together for
the purpose of discussing how best to breed and rear our domestic animals
at a profit, there is always somebody to bring in the everlasting story
of the mare and the quagga, not because it may have any relevancy to the
subject, but it is an opportunity not to be lost to show one’s learning.
As this story has served the purpose of showing off the learning of so
many thousands who never saw it, I will here give it in its original
and official form. A communication from the Earl of Morton was read
before the Royal Society of London, November 23, 1820, and published in
“Philosophical Transactions” for 1821, p. 20, and is as follows:
“I yesterday had an opportunity of observing a singular fact in
natural history, which you may, perhaps, deem not unworthy of
being communicated to the Royal Society.
“Some years ago I was desirous of trying the experiment of
domesticating the quagga, and endeavored to procure some
individuals of that species. I obtained a male; but being
disappointed of a female, I tried to breed from the male quagga
and a young chestnut mare of seven-eighths Arabian blood, and
which had never been bred from; the result was the production
of a female hybrid, now five years old, and bearing both in her
form and in her color very decided indications of her mixed
origin. I subsequently parted with the seven-eighths Arabian
mare to Sir Gore Ousley, who has bred from her, by a very fine
black Arabian horse. I yesterday morning examined the produce,
namely, a two-year-old filly and a year-old colt. They have the
character of the Arabian breed as decidedly as can be expected,
where fifteen-sixteenths of the blood are Arabian; and they
are fine specimens of that breed; but both in their color and
in the hair of their manes they have a striking resemblance to
the quagga. Their color is bay, marked more or less like the
quagga, in a darker tint. Both are distinguished by the dark
line along the ridge of the back, the dark stripes across the
forehand, and the dark bars across the back part of the legs.
The stripes across the forehand of the colt are confined to
the withers, and the part of the neck next to them. Those on
the filly cover nearly the whole of the neck and the back as
far as the flanks. The color of her coat on the neck adjoining
the mane is pale, and approaching a dun, rendering the stripes
there more conspicuous than those on the colt. The same
pale tint appears in a less degree on the rump; and in this
circumstance of the dun tint also she resembles the quagga.
“The colt and filly were taken up from grass for my inspection,
and owing to the present state of their coats I could not
ascertain whether they bear any indications of spots on the
rump, the dark pasterns, or the narrow strips on the forehead,
with which the quagga is marked. They have no appearance of
the dark lines along the belly or the white tufts on the side
of the mane. Both their manes are black; that of the filly is
short and stiff, and stands upright; and Sir Gore Ousley’s
stud groom alleged it never was otherwise; that of the colt is
long, but so stiff as to arch upward, and to hang clear of the
side of the neck, in which circumstance it resembles that of a
hybrid. This is the more remarkable, as the mane of the Arabian
breed hangs lank and closer to the neck than those of most
others. The bars across the legs, both of the hybrid and of the
colt and filly, are more strongly defined and darker than those
on the legs of the quagga, which are very slightly marked; and
though the hybrid has several quagga marks which the colt and
filly have not, yet the most striking, namely, the stripes on
the forehand, are fewer and less apparent than those on the
colt and filly. These circumstances may appear singular, but
I think you will agree with me that they are trifles compared
with the extraordinary fact of so many striking features which
do not belong to the dam, being in two successive instances
communicated through her to the progeny not only of another
sire, who also had them not, but to a sire probably of another
species; for such we have very strong reasons for supposing the
quagga to be”
This is Lord Morton’s original quagga story without abridgement, the
substance of which has been quoted and printed millions of times, but I
never have seen anything like an analysis of it, either for or against
its value as determining any fact or principle in breeding. The elements
are: a young chestnut mare, “seven-eighths Arabian blood,” was bred to a
quagga and produced a hybrid. She was afterward bred to a black “Arabian”
and produced a colt and a filly that were supposed to be marked like the
quagga; hence, first impregnations influence all subsequent foals; and
hence “the heredity of influence,” as called by some scientists. Lord
Morton has given an intelligent and, no doubt, faithful description of
the colt and the filly that came out of the mare that had previously
produced the hybrid quagga; but he has failed to show that none of the
near-by ancestors of the sire and dam of this colt and filly were of a
dun color and were marked just as the colt and filly were marked. Until
it is shown that the peculiar markings of this colt and filly could not
have been inherited from their natural ancestors, the half-formed theory
that they were the result of the coupling with the quagga, years before,
wholly fails to satisfy the human understanding. When Lord Morton tells
us that the dam was seven-eighths, and the sire full Arabian, he seems
to think he has covered that point; but he has not, for he has not shown
that there was a single drop of Arabian blood in either of them. It
must not be forgotten that at the period here referred to all Eastern
and Southern horses were called Arabians, when not one in fifty of them
ever saw Arabia either through his own eyes or through the eyes of any
of his ancestors. The composite material out of which the English race
horse was built up was of all colors, including the dun, with the dark
stripe on his back, the short stripes or patches on his shoulders, and
the transverse bars on his legs. A horse of this color, I am told, once
won the Derby. The Kattywar horses of Northwestern India, Mr. Darwin
informs us, are from fifteen to sixteen hands high, of all colors, with
the several shades of dun the most common, and when one of them fails of
having the spinal stripe, the shoulder stripes, and the leg stripes the
purity of his breeding is doubted. This is the type of horse the British
officers ride, and when their term of service expires sometimes bring
home with them. There are many duns in Persia and in Eastern Asia Minor,
I am informed, and the stripes seem to belong to the color. In Norway the
color of the native horse is dun and the stripes are considered evidence
of pure breeding. Many of the mountain horses of Spain are duns, with
the stripes. The dun color prevailed, to a greater or less extent, among
the native English horses of three hundred years ago, and some of them
were brought to this country in the early colonial period. Mr. Darwin,
in his “Animals and Plants under Domestication,” fully describes the dun
horses of Devonshire, and in order to be clearly understood he figures
one of them showing the dark stripes on the shoulder and the transverse
bars upon the legs. I have seen numbers of dun horses so marked, in this
country, the most conspicuous that I can now recall being Wapsie, the
distinguished son of Green’s Bashaw. The fact that horses of this color
and marking are to be found in all parts of the globe, has led many
thoughtful writers to the conclusion that these characteristics are among
the very earliest in the history of the horse. To bring this instance to
a close, I must say:
1. Beyond the color alone of the sire and dam of this colt and filly,
there is no evidence whatever that they might not have inherited, by
ordinary generation, the color and markings from some of their ancestors.
2. The miscegenous breeding of the ass upon the mare has been practiced,
we know, for more than three thousand years, and yet in all that time,
and down to our own day and experiences, there has been no established
indication that the first impregnation of the filly by the ass had any
influence whatever upon her subsequent produce by the horse.
This theory of the first impregnation having an influence on all
subsequent produce is probably more generally maintained among dog
fanciers than any other class of breeders. In some instances when a
valuable maiden bitch gets astray she is banished from the kennel and
either destroyed or given away. For this foolish notion some antique
authority might be cited. Burdach, a French writer on physiology, says:
“If a bitch be once put to a dog of another race, every litter
of puppies afterward will include one belonging to that other
breed, except the first time she be put only to dogs of her own
breed.”
This is a kind of pseudo science that is only calculated to mislead,
for the vital facts are omitted. What was the pedigree of the bitch?
She may have looked like a well-bred pointer and a high price may have
been paid for her, but her sire may have been a mongrel, or, possibly, a
miserable cur. No dog breeder or dog dealer has ever been known to drown
the results of a _mésalliance_ if it was a fairly good-looking puppy. It
goes into the records as a thoroughbred and finds a market. When a dog
and a bitch, seeming to be well-bred and costing a high price, bring into
the world a litter of puppies showing a mixed inheritance, the fancier at
once jumps to the conclusion that there is something mysterious about it,
and as he has heard of the evil results of first impregnations, he thinks
he has discovered the source of the trouble and straightway this is
another example resulting from first impregnation. He then goes back on
the dealer, or possibly the breeder, and there to conceal the fact that
the blood of his kennel was not pure, he would naturally play the rogue
and admit that the young bitch might have got astray. This satisfies the
unsophisticated owner, and another trick of an unscrupulous “dog jockey”
goes on record as a case of “heredity of influence,” when in fact it was
nothing more nor less than a dirty fraud in the breeding of the dog or
bitch, or both.
Some of the early French writers on scientific subjects, as Burdach,
Michelet, etc., advanced the theory more than a hundred years ago
that the children of a second marriage, in some cases, inherited the
resemblance and character of the first husband. In the nature of things
this theory could have but very feeble support and that chiefly among
scandalmongers. In connection with this phase of “heredity of influence”
I will give a little instance of my personal experience. Twenty years
ago, or more, I was making an address before an association, in a New
England city, on the subject of “How to Breed the Trotting Horse.” The
audience was very large and composed exclusively of gentlemen. At the
opening it was announced that at the close of each specific topic an
opportunity would be given to any one in the audience to ask questions
on the thoughts presented. The signal had hardly been given when a
gentleman arose in the audience and raised the question whether I had not
omitted an important fact in heredity? He then went on to rehearse the
everlasting quagga story, with a most confident flourish of his learning
and a sure grasp on a triumph.
“The quagga story,” I remarked, “is well known to everybody, but there
are some facts about it that are not known to anybody. The mare herself
may have been from a dun tribe of horses, or the horse to which she was
afterward bred may have been from such a tribe, hundreds of which have
stripes on the back, the shoulders and the legs, and thus the stripes
might be accounted for by indirect heredity; not because the quagga had
stripes, but because the dun horse ancestry had stripes. Most people,
probably, look upon it as a freak of nature, and as the case has never
duplicated itself, in all the years before or since, it fails to be a
practical question, and in our personal experiences as breeders, we need
not be afraid of suffering harm from it.”
“Your explanation,” replied my interlocutor, “fails to cover the case, I
think, for I have seen, with my own eyes, instances of it in the human
family and I will relate one. A dozen years ago, or more, a friend of
mine married a lady who was a brunette in complexion, with black eyes and
black hair. He was of florid complexion, with blue eyes and sandy hair,
just about the color of my own. After three or four years the husband
died leaving two children of his own complexion and color of eyes and
hair. In course of time the widow married a man with black hair and
black eyes, and there came a second set of children that were as perfect
reproductions of the first husband as his own children were in complexion
and color of hair.”
“How long have you personally known this family, and have you ever seen
these two sets of children?”
“I have known the family intimately ever since the first marriage and I
have seen both sets of children very often.”
“You certainly have had abundant opportunity to know whereof you affirm,
and the facts seem so plain that it would be a refinement on folly to
undertake to contradict them; but there is one element in this case that
has not been explained, and it is a vital one. How are we to know whether
some man of ‘sandy complexion’ and with ‘hair and eyes just the color of
yours,’ is not the father of this second set of children?”
This ended the colloquy in a “roof-raising” shout, and I never have
been called upon since, in a public meeting, to even allude to the
“heredity of influence.” With the experiences of thousands of years of
miscegnatious breeding between the ass and the mare and no indication
among the writers of the ancients as to the evil and abiding effects of
first impregnations; and with the experiences of more than a century in
this country, with the same results, we are compelled to throw over all
claims of this kind until furnished with full and complete pedigrees of
the sire and dam, showing the color and markings of each individual for a
number of generations.
HEREDITY OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS AND INSTINCTS.—On this point there
is a lack of unanimity among the promoters of the “primordial germ”
theory, and the principal advocate of the negative side of this question
appears to be Professor Weismann. Mere opinions of men, no difference
how profound their learning, cannot be of any value, unless they are
sustained by actual experiences, on questions of this kind. To determine
this matter we are not dependent upon any of the explanations of the
central Darwinian hypothesis of creation without a Creator, for we have
all around us, safely within the historic period of human observation
and experience, mountains of evidence, so to speak, heaped upon us, going
to show that “acquired character and instincts” are transmitted and
become hereditary.
Dr. Pritchard, in his “Natural History of Man,” gives the following
illustration on this point:
“Two other very important observations made by M. Roulin, in
South America, were pointed out by M. Geoffrey St. Hillaire, in
his report to the Academy of Sciences. They refer to the fact
of the hereditary transmission of habits originally impressed
with care and art upon the ancestors. Of this fact I will
adduce other examples in the sequel; at present I only advert
to M. Roulin’s observations. The horses bred on the grazing
farms of the table-lands of the Cordillera are carefully taught
a peculiar pace, which is a sort of running amble. This is
not their natural mode of progression, but they are inured to
it very early, and the greatest pains are taken to prevent
them from moving in any other gait; in this way the acquired
habit becomes a second nature. It happens occasionally that
such horses becoming lame, or no longer fit for use, it is
then customary to let them loose, if they happen to be well
grown stallions, into the pasture grounds. It is constantly
observed that these horses become the sires of a race to which
the ambling pace is natural, and which requires no teaching.
The fact is so well known that such colts have received a
particular name; they are termed ‘aguilillas.’”
The fact that there were some pacers in South America came to me from
many sources, and especially from gentlemen of intelligence and character
who had spent years in that country, and was for a long time a puzzle
to me. All the evidences of history went to show that the horse stock
of South America was Spanish, and no evidence could be found that the
Spanish horse was a pacer, or that there was any tendency to pace in
the blood of the Spanish horse. This report to the French Academy of
Sciences was made in the early part of this century and is really the
first information I have ever had of Spanish horses pacing. Dr. Pritchard
was one of the earlier modern writers on natural history and stands very
high as a man of conscience as well as learning. The surprising feature
in this South American experience is the wide and, apparently, immediate
measure of success that seems to have followed the training to the pacing
gait in its transmission. It may be taken as a rule that the changing of
the gait from the diagonal to the lateral, or _vice versa_, is a slow
process, and it seems to me that with few exceptions it would require
several generations before the new habit of action would become fixed
in the breed. It is just possible, however, that there may have been a
tincture of pacing blood in the Spanish horses of the sixteenth century.
The Visigoths, one of the early Asiatic hordes that overran Europe, first
settled in Scandinavia, and the southern part of Sweden is still called
“Gothland.” After a long stay in that country they became dissatisfied
with soil and climate and determined to seek another. According to the
historians, they first migrated in a southeastward direction and from
there in a southwestward till they reached the southern part of France,
from which they soon passed over into Spain, which they subdued, and
established there a dynasty which lasted two hundred years. In A.D. 711
the Saracens from Africa crossed over, and after a very bloody battle
lasting two days, defeated Rhoderic, the last of the dynasty, and cut his
army to pieces. In Scandinavia, and especially in Norway and Sweden, we
find plenty of dun horses that are pacers, and they are recognized as a
very old breed. In the mountains of Spain we also find small dun horses,
and it is, perhaps, not an unreasonable possibility that the Visigoths
may have carried some of their horse stock with them in their migration
from the North to the South of Europe, and thus this habit of action
that may have remained for centuries latent in the breed may have been
unusually plastic in its restoration. This, however, is a mere surmise as
to a possibility and cannot displace the historic observations reported
by M. Roulin and presented before the French Academy. The gait of the
South American pacers, as I understand it, is not that of the pure pace,
with two strokes completing the revolution, but is more like the “saddle
gaits” that we find in the West and Southwest of our own country. The
true pace seems to be exceptional, because that is not a saddle gait. It
is a fact often observed in this country that foals from parents trained
to the saddle gaits will take to those gaits naturally and as soon as
they are dropped. In a preceding part of this work I have given some
consideration to the fact that three or four hundred years ago the horses
of our English ancestors were largely pacers, and to the methods adopted
in that day for changing the action from the diagonal to the lateral
gait—the hopples, rattles, weights, etc. The descendants of those horses,
brought to this country by the colonists, as will be seen at another
place, were nearly all pacers.
The following letter, addressed by Dr. William Huggins to Charles
Darwin and by him published in “Nature” twenty years ago, very strongly
illustrates the heredity of instincts, and as it is authentic and true
beyond question I will here insert it. Dr. Huggins says:
“I wish to communicate to you a curious case of mental
peculiarity. I possess an English mastiff, by name Kepler, a
son of the celebrated Turk out of Venus. I brought the dog,
when six weeks old, from the stable in which he was born. The
first time I took him out he started back in alarm at the
first butcher’s shop he had ever seen. I soon found he had a
violent antipathy to butchers and butchers’ shops. When six
months old a servant took him with her on an errand. At a short
distance before coming to the house she had to pass a butcher’s
shop; the dog threw himself down (being led by a string), and
neither coaxing nor threats would make him pass the shop. The
dog was too heavy to be carried, and as a crowd collected,
the servant had to return with the dog more than a mile, and
then go without him. This occurred about two years ago. The
antipathy still continues, but the dog will pass nearer to a
shop than he formerly would. About two months ago, in a little
book on dogs, published by Dean, I discovered that the same
strange antipathy is shown in the father, Turk. I then wrote
to Mr. Nichols, the former owner of Turk, to ask him for any
information he might have on the point. He replied: ‘I can say
that the same antipathy exists in King, the sire of Turk, in
Turk, in Punch (son of Turk), out of Meg, and in Paris (son
of Turk out of Juno). Paris has the greatest antipathy, as he
would hardly go into a street where a butcher’s shop is, and
would run away after passing it. When a cart with a butcher’s
man came into the place where the dogs were kept, although they
could not see him, they all were ready to break their chains. A
master butcher, dressed privately, called one evening on Paris’
master to see the dog. He had hardly entered the house before
the dog (though shut in) was so much excited that he had to be
put into a shed, and the butcher was forced to leave before
seeing the dog. The same dog, at Hastings, made a spring at a
gentleman who came into the hotel. The owner caught the dog and
apologized, and said he never knew him to do so before, except
when a butcher came to his house. The gentleman at once said
that was his business. So you see that they inherited these
antipathies, and show a great deal of breed.’”
Some ancestor, not far removed, of these three generations of dogs
must have suffered a life of oppression and cruelty at the hands of an
unfeeling master, and that master must have been a butcher. We fail to
understand and appreciate the mentality of the dog and the horse, and
as they are above the average of the brute creation we fail of a word
midway between instinct and reason to express that mentality. We call it
“instinct,” and correctly, too, but this grade of instinct requires a
more expressive word to represent it. That a feeling of antipathy should
have been so deeply seated in the nature and life of a dog that the
resentment and hatred should have been transmitted to his descendants
for three generations in succession is a very remarkable instance of
the heredity of instinct. As a companion piece to the foregoing and as
showing the difference between the hatred of one dog and the gratitude
and love of another, I will relate an instance that came under my own
observation and knowledge more than forty years ago. General John G.
Gordon was a merchant in Muscatine, Iowa, and Dr. George Reeder was a
physician of great skill and very large practice. These two gentlemen
were among my most intimate personal friends. On a certain occasion one
of Gordon’s well-to-do farmer customers brought him a puppy a few months
old as a present. He had no use for a dog and didn’t want one, but he was
not willing to forfeit either the good wishes or the custom of his farmer
friend, so he accepted the gift with thanks. When he took the puppy home
in the evening there was consternation in the household, and in a family
conference it was decided that he should not be allowed to run through
the house with his dirty feet, and thereupon he was consigned to the cow
stable, and that became his home as long as he lived. Every night and
morning he got a liberal ration of milk fresh from the cow and they soon
became inseparable friends. In cold nights, as if by mutual agreement, he
always slept cuddled up close to the cow. At that time in the history of
the town, the country was open and pasture abundant in every direction,
and everybody kept a cow. In the mornings these cows would start out to
their grazing grounds, in bands, radiating in every direction, and in
the evenings could be seen “the lowing herds wind slowly o’er the lea.”
Gordon’s dog never missed a day for years in going with his friend the
cow and returning with her in the evening.
Dr. Reeder used two or three horses in his practice, and his stable was
on the same alley, and some ten or twelve rods distant from Gordon’s
cow stable. One day in winter time he was having his bins filled with
corn in the ear, and to make room for it all he had to fill up a large
dry-goods box that stood in one corner of the stable. While he was
supervising the delivery of the corn Gordon’s dog came in, reared up on
his hind legs, seized an ear of corn and made off with it. The doctor
was very much surprised at this act of the dog as he never had seen or
heard of a dog eating corn. While he was thinking about this strange
act of the dog, he came back again and seized another ear and made off
with it. This time the doctor watched him, and he carried it direct
to his friend the cow, dropped it before her, and she soon made away
with it. This phenomenal exhibition of the attachment of one animal to
another of entirely different nature aroused the doctor’s desire for a
further confirmation of what he had seen. Concealing himself behind the
door he awaited further developments and in a little while the dog came
back, seized the third ear, and whipping past some other cows, carried
it safely to his friend. I have seen this dog a hundred times, and he
was a mongrel nondescript, about the size of the average pointer, with
nothing remarkable about his appearance; but in all the illustrations of
all the naturalists I have not met with any authenticated instance where
character in a dumb animal was so beautifully exhibited. In history we
have many touching examples of the attachment of the dog to his master
and of his heroism in defending the weak against the strong, but this
case seems to be unique. Here is a character developed that is far more
than “the sum of inherited habits.” We may call it instinct, but that
word fails to express it. In whatever light we view this character, it
has in it an element of reason and we have no word that expresses it.
The oldest written evidence we have of the origin of the setter dog dates
back about two hundred years, in which we find John Harris agreeing to
teach Henry Herbert’s “spaniel bitch Quand” to set game. Allusions are
made in the old writers to dogs used for this purpose long before, but
the setter certainly has an ancestry dating back at least two hundred
years. The pointer is of much more recent origin and seems to have come
from an ancestry wholly distinct from that of the setter, and yet, in the
field, it would be very difficult for the most competent jury to decide
which stands to his game with the greater steadiness. It is agreed, I
think, among experienced sportsmen and breeders that the best dogs are
the result of couplings made in the midst of the hunting season when the
instincts of the parents are aroused and active under the gun. Puppies
so bred are already half-trained when they are whelped. The instinct to
point the game instead of rushing upon it is an instinct acquired at an
earlier or later date, well within the historic period, and we know that
it is transmitted and inherited under the laws of heredity. We know also
that this instinct is strengthened and improved by training and use;
and at the same time it is weakened, if not obliterated, by neglect and
non-use for a few generations.
The Scotch collie, with plenty to do, is altogether the most useful, and
hence, in a utilitarian sense, the most valuable of all the varieties of
the canine race. In understanding his master’s commands and the motions
of his hand in the management of the flock, he evinces an intelligence,
an instinct, that is almost human. There is a marked distinction between
the instinct of the pointer and the collie. The former acts chiefly
by his innate mental endowments, while the latter is at his best when
carrying out the will of his master. In both cases the instinct was
acquired in comparatively recent years, and it is now fixed in the breeds
and is transmitted with great certainty.
The most remarkable results in the development and use of an instinct
that was practically latent, or never developed, are to be found in the
history of the American Trotting Horse. Fifty-one years ago Lady Suffolk
was the first trotter to cover the mile in 2:29½. Four years later
Pelham, a converted pacer, trotted in 2:28, and four years still later
Highland Maid, a converted pacer, trotted in 2:27. In 1859 Flora Temple
trotted in 2:19¾; in 1874 Goldsmith Maid trotted in 2:14; in 1885 Maud
S. trotted in 2:08¾; in 1892 Nancy Hanks trotted in 2:04; and in 1894
Alix trotted in 2:03¾. But a greater performance than any of these was
that of the two-year-old colt, Arion, when in 1891 he covered the mile in
2:10¾. I have no hesitation in pronouncing this the greatest performance
ever made, to this date, not because it was the fastest, as shown by
the watch, but because it was made by a two-year-old, and from this
fact there had been no time for prolonged and skillful training. He was
essentially the product of heredity and not the result of education.
Fifty-one years ago there was but one animal in the 2:30 list, and at the
close of 1896 there were over fifteen thousand within that limit and far
more than fifteen thousand others hovering on its border. This astounding
result must be attributed primarily to a trotting inheritance, but this
inheritance has been constantly strengthened, reinforced, fortified by
the acquired capacities resulting from the development of the trotting
speed of succeeding generations. This is not a mere estimate of what has
resulted from acquired characters and instincts, for if we put all the
observations of all the writers on subjects of natural history, large and
small, together, they make but a meager and unsatisfactory showing when
compared with the fifteen thousand actual experiences, officially noted
and recorded on the spot and printed in “Wallace’s Year Book.” In all the
world there is no other collection of statistics so vast, so accurate
and so valuable as is there to be found, touching the question we are
considering.
While the heredity of acquired characters and instincts is thus clearly
and fully established, there is another truth intimately connected with
it that should not be forgotten. In an inheritance springing from recent
acquisitions there seems to be less of adhesive strength than in one
that has come down through many generations. This being true, it follows
that whether the lines of inheritance be long or short there must be
an intelligent and constant exercise of good judgment in strengthening
them by bringing the best and strongest together and uniting them in
the prospective foal. When this has been done it is possible that the
foal may not be of much value, but the chances of success are in exact
proportion to the strength of all the lines of inheritance that are
united in the foal. Beyond the chance of failure and beyond the average
chance of an average production, there is a chance for something better
than any of the ancestors. This latter hope always has been and always
will be the inspiration of the breeder. In his structure and form he
may be an improvement on his parents, but his value as a trotter can
only be determined by the development of his instincts and speed as a
trotter. Without such development he may transmit what he inherits,
but he adds nothing to his inheritance except by the development of
his own powers. These accretions, growing out of the development of
succeeding generations, are the material cause that has placed the
American Trotter at the very edge of two minutes to the mile, and with
wise management will eventually carry him away beyond that rate of speed.
This whole topic may be summed up in a single sentence: every acquisition
of eminence and superiority adds something to the value of what is
transmitted.
HEREDITY OF BAD QUALITIES, UNSOUNDNESS, ETC.—Under the laws of
inheritance no distinction can be made between the desirable and the
undesirable, nor between the earlier or later acquisitions, as they
are all liable to be transmitted and to become hereditary. The bitter
must go with the sweet. Dropping below is just as liable to occur as
rising above what might be considered the average inheritance of the
immediate parents. This may result from following or throwing back to
some undesirable or unsound cross that may exist in some of the lines
of inheritance which possibly may be distant several generations. As a
practical consideration it makes but little difference whether a tendency
to, or a fully developed, unsoundness has been in the inheritance for
generations, or whether it may be the result of some recent accident or
injury, it is liable to be transmitted. It is known to everybody that
the great running horse Lexington was blind, and it was urged that his
blindness was not congenital, but the result of an accident; hence it
was argued by those interested that it would not be unsafe to breed to
him. It was stated and repeated a hundred times that while in training
he got loose in his stable and stuffed himself at the oats bin, and
without knowing this his trainer took him out next morning and ran him
a trial of four miles, from the effects of which he lost his sight.
Without giving full credence to this as the cause of his blindness, it is
nevertheless true that he filled the country with blind horses. If, for
example, a joint or a ligament or a muscle of the hind leg be sprained by
overexertion or by a misstep, a spavin or a curb may develop, or possibly
something still worse, and this is a blemish and generally an unsoundness
that is likely to be transmitted, if not in a developed form, then in an
unmistakable tendency in that direction, which, in turn, will make its
appearance in succeeding generations. The horse world, and I might say,
the whole animal kingdom under domestication, abounds in examples, seen
and unseen, of unsoundness originating in injuries to the parents.
CHAPTER XXXII.
HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED (_Continued_).
Trotting speed first supposed to be an accident—Then, that it
came from the runner—William Wheelan’s views—Test of powers of
endurance—The term “thoroughbred” much abused—Definition of
“thoroughbred”—How trotters may be made “thoroughly bred”—How
to study pedigrees—Reward offered for the production of a
thoroughbred horse that was a natural pacer—The trotter
more lasting than the runner—The dam of Palo Alto—Arion as
a two-year-old—Only three stallions have been able to get
trotters from running-bred mares—“Structural incongruity”—The
pacer and trotter inseparable—How to save the trot and reduce
the ratio of pacers—Development a necessity—Table proving this
proposition—The “tin cup” policy a failure—Woodburn at the
wrong end of the procession.
Before the question of speed in the trotter began to be considered,
either from a historical or a philosophical standpoint, or, in other
words, a question involving scientific truths, there was a universal
concurrence in the idea that speed at the trot was an accident and
that there was nothing of inheritance or heredity about it. This idea
was greatly strengthened by the performances of such horses as Boston
Horse, Rattler, Edwin Forrest, Dutchman, Confidence, Moscow, Pelham,
Flora Temple, Tacony, etc., whose origin and blood were wholly unknown,
while they were on the turf. Contemporaneous with these there were such
splendid performers as Topgallant, Screwdriver, Lady Suffolk, Sally
Miller, O’Blennis and many others that were known to be descended from
Messenger, a horse that was looked upon by everybody as a “thoroughbred.”
Hence, the conclusion that the flying trotter was either an accident in
breeding, or his speed qualities came from the English running horse.
The fact that such champion trotters, in their day, as Pelham, Highland
Maid, etc., had originally been pacers and changed from the lateral
to the diagonal gait was sedulously concealed from the public, during
their day, and only after they had passed away was this bar-sinister
in their origin brought to light. Doubtless this same fact might have
been developed in the origin of Edwin Forrest and others, if action had
been taken in time. In that day—say the first half of this century—it
is not remarkable that the plebeian origin of some of our most famous
early trotters was concealed, for everybody was claiming a thoroughbred
ancestry, and the more famous the performer the more certain he was to be
furnished with a thoroughbred pedigree.
“Whatever is of value in the trotter must come from the runner, and
whatever is of value in the runner must come from the Arab,” was the
view that was universally accepted when I was a boy. And yet there were
thousands of fast trotters and fast pacers in this country long before
the first running horse was brought from England, and England itself was
abundantly supplied with horses several hundred years before there was
a horse in Arabia. These two facts are historical, and the dates make
them incontrovertible. Some forty or fifty years ago William Wheelan,
a successful trainer and driver of trotting horses in this country,
took some trotters over to England, to try his “luck,” as others had
done before him, in making matches and winning stakes. He was quite
successful, and when he came home he was kept busy answering questions
about English horses and why they did not have more trotters there. He
replied that “there were plenty of horses that could trot as well or
better than our American horses, if they were trained; they had plenty of
blood and most of them good limbs and feet, with all the substance that
was needed.” This made William Wheelan an authority, and his opinion was
quoted all over the land; which went to prove that the way to breed the
trotter was to get plenty of running blood into his veins. About this
time the English running horse Trustee was bred on a famous trotting
mare, Fanny Pullen, a daughter of Winthrop Messenger, of Maine, and the
produce was the gelding Trustee, the first to trot twenty miles within
the hour, or at least the first to make that distance regularly and to
rule. This gave a tremendous “boost” to running blood, as everybody
except Hiram Woodruff ascribed the result to the great powers of the
imported running horse. All subsequent experiences fully demonstrated
that Hiram Woodruff, although alone, was right; for although Trustee’s
blood commingled more kindly with trotting blood than most of the other
running horses, he left no trotters but this one. The highest rate of
speed of which this gelding was capable was about 2:40, and at last, in
a race of mile heats with some fifth-rate old pelter, at Cincinnati,
Ohio, on a very hot day, he fell exhausted on the track and died from
the effects of the heat. But the great fame of being the only horse able
to trot twenty miles within the hour did not long remain with this son
of imported Trustee. Five others have done the same thing, viz., Captain
Magowan, Controller, John Stewart, Mattie Howard, and Lady Fulton, all of
whom went faster than Trustee, except Lady Fulton.
There have been many crucial tests of the “staying qualities” of running
blood in the trotter, as against the trotter without any running blood,
in which the running blood has uniformly been worsted. The last of these
which I now recall was a match for two thousand dollars between Scotland,
a half-bred son of imported Bonnie Scotland, and Lizzie M., by Thomas
Jefferson, and out of a pacing mare. The race was two-mile heats, best
three in five—a very unusual race, and admirably adapted to test the
staying powers of the contestants. Scotland was a fast and well-seasoned
trotter; while the mare had, probably, a little higher flight of speed
she never had been tried at such a distance, and in her breeding she was
short, and had not a single drop of running blood in her inheritance. The
mare won the first and second heats in 4:56—5:03, and the gelding the
third heat in 4:55½, the fastest in the race, but he was not able to come
again, and the last heat was won by the mare in 4:58½. This race took
place at Philadelphia in 1883, and if, at that time, there still remained
any advocates of “more running blood in the trotter,” they have not since
been in evidence, with two or three addle-pated exceptions.
In looking back over the many years I have devoted to the literature of
the horse, and especially to the breeding of the trotting horse, I can
find no word in the English language that has been so much abused as the
word “thoroughbred.” A minister wrote a great, pretentious book on the
horse in which he maintained that the Morgan horse was a “thoroughbred.”
A lawyer wrote another pretentious book in which he maintained that the
trotting horse Dexter was a “thoroughbred.” With these two shining lights
in the learned professions writing books on the horse and pronouncing
this family or that individual “thoroughbred” without knowing the meaning
of the term, we should not deal too severely with uneducated men for
following their example. The minister and the lawyer evidently had
always heard the term “thoroughbred” applied to what men considered the
best, and when they were discussing their favorites which they considered
the best, they naturally called them “thoroughbreds” without knowing what
they were saying. This was more than twenty years ago, and was really
the popular conception of the meaning of the term at that time. Not one
man in a thousand then knew that the term had any other meaning than
the individual superiority of the animal, and that it applied only to
the pedigree, or concentration of blood in the veins of the animal, was
quite foreign to the popular conception. After the founding of _Wallace’s
Monthly_ the light began to dawn on this as well as on many other
questions, and to-day the true meaning of the term is very generally
understood.
To constitute a “thoroughbred” of whatever variety or species the animal
must possess a certain number of uncontaminated crosses of his own
breed, and this applies to all kinds of domestic animals that are bred
for special uses or qualities. There is no law determining the number of
these uncontaminated crosses, except the law of usage. The cattle men,
I think, were the first to establish a rule on this subject, in this
country, and they did it on enlightened and scientific principles. It was
found in experience that the danger of atavism, or throwing back to some
undesirable ancestor, was diminished in the ratio of the number of pure
crosses through which the animal was descended. At two crosses it was
found that there were many reversions to some type outside of the breed;
at three crosses there were not so many; at four there were very few,
and at five reversions had practically disappeared. While some required
another cross the majority drove the stake at the fifth generation,
proclaiming thereby that an animal bred through five uncontaminated
generations of ancestors was free from the dangers of reversion, and
hence was “thoroughly bred.” This is the formula and this is the
principle, and it applies with equal propriety to the colt, the calf, the
pig, the puppy, the chick, or the birdling. In this phrase “thoroughly
bred” we have the origin, reason and meaning of the term “thoroughbred.”
The formula of this rule, if tabulated, would show two parents: next,
four grandparents; next eight great-grandparents; next sixteen ancestors
and next thirty-two, making in all sixty-two ancestors, all of which
must be “thoroughly bred.” This rule of breeding is not limited to the
running horse alone, but applies to all the varieties of our domestic
animals; and whenever the point is reached at which the danger of
reversion has been overcome the animal is “thoroughly bred,” and the term
“thoroughbred” applied just as properly to one kind of domestic animal as
to another.
The question here arises as to whether the American Trotting Horse can
be so thoroughly bred as to be entitled to be ranked as a thoroughbred
trotter? This question is already affirmatively answered when we say the
rule “applies to all the varieties of our domestic animals.” This is
the general fact, but the trotting horse has a qualification, already
determined, that serves as a fixed starting point in giving him rank. The
standard as originally adopted and honestly administered was the mighty
engine that wrought the revolution in breeding the trotter. It fixed a
certain qualification that had to be complied with before an animal could
be admitted to standard rank, and that qualification was in brief to
either perform or produce a performer that could cover a mile in 2:30.
It excluded no strains of blood, but it admitted the animals only that
had fully demonstrated the ability to trot or to produce trotters. The
standard is now antiquated, and far behind the speed of the trotters,
which is a clear demonstration of the wisdom of its construction and
adoption, but to this topic I will refer at another place more at length.
With the standard, then, and the unmistakable evidence it furnished of
the possession of what we will call “trotting blood,” we have a more
definite and satisfactory starting point than can be claimed for any
kind or variety of domestic animal. With this demonstrated ability to
trot fully established, we can commence to count the generations of
standard animals in a trotting pedigree, and if we find five generations
of ancestors, with every animal standard bred, we can safely and
intelligently say the animal is “thoroughly bred” as a trotting horse.
With those sixty-two progenitors all legally established as standard
animals, who will say this is not a thoroughbred trotting horse? He
is not only thoroughbred, but he is more distinctly and completely
thoroughbred than any other domestic animal, because the fifth generation
of his ancestors, and the fourth and the third and the second and the
first have all proved that they are either trotters or the producers
of trotters. No other breed has ever been established on so good a
foundation, for they have fairly won their initial honors by what they
have done. But this is one degree higher and embraces one generation
more than the formula usually prescribed as necessary to constitute the
rank of thoroughbred. Five “generations of ancestors” do not include the
representative product of those generations. The product would be the
sixth generation, which is one more than the generally accepted usage
requires. An animal representing five generations of standard trotting
blood, complete and without contamination, is “thoroughly bred” and is
justly entitled to be classified as a “thoroughbred trotting horse.” At
this point of breeding it is considered that the danger of reversion is
practically eliminated, and hence this distinctive classification. At the
time of this writing (1897) there should be, in this country, quite a
number of youngsters fully entitled to rank as thoroughbreds.
All intelligent breeders have long been aiming at this point, not merely
for the name “thoroughbred,” but for the greater certainty of uniformity
in producing what they want—the ability to perform; and the quality
of these thoroughbred trotters must be determined by the ability to
perform and the quality of each and every one of the ancestors. If each
and every one of the four or five generations of ancestors was able to
go out and win himself or herself, there could hardly be a doubt that
the colt could do the same, but some of those ancestors may be in the
standard merely from reflected honors, which are good, but not a crucial
test of superiority in the individual. There is nothing like the animal
that “has gone out and done it” himself, over and over again, and when
we sit down to the study and comparison of pedigrees in the thoroughbred
rank we find great differences in the quality of the lines of descent.
The reflected honors of an uncle or an aunt are of much less value than
the honor of a direct ancestor. While the blood of all the ancestors is
tested blood, the individuals may not all have been tested, and hence
are less certain in transmitting the true trotting instinct. While the
standard has done wonders in teaching the true art of breeding, like
all other human devices it has its imperfections. Just like the runner,
the trotter may be strictly thoroughbred, and yet in taking after some
of the imperfections of one or more of his ancestors, he may be of but
little value as a performer. This truth has been verified in a thousand
experiences in the runner, and it is just as liable to be verified in the
trotter. Hence the supreme importance of looking well to the qualities
and capacities of every animal in the inheritance.
At the very inception of the idea that the trotting horse could be bred
and developed into a breed, an opinion prevailed everywhere that it
could not be done. The theory that speed at the trot came from speed at
the gallop was universally held and advocated. In 1868 I made a tour
among the breeders and horsemen of Tennessee and Kentucky, for the
purpose of gathering information about both runners and trotters. Those
States were then beginning to pull themselves together after the war.
At General Harding’s, among others, I was shown a large, heavy-boned
colt, and the General remarked that if he did not make a race horse he
would make a capital stallion to take to the West and breed on trotting
mares. At Balie Peyton’s I was shown a great big, coarse horse that had
run some races and won in very slow time, and that was unsound at many
points. He was over sixteen hands high, and had very bad limbs. Mr.
Peyton remarked that “he was too big for a race horse, but he would do
well in the West as a trotting sire.” This was the remark everywhere as
applied to big colts that couldn’t run. About the same time Mr. Joseph
Cairn Simpson, then in the employ of a sporting paper in New York, as an
editorial writer, expressed his sorrow that Hambletonian did not have a
thoroughbred cross, close up, and his opinion that such a cross would
have made him a much greater sire. Thus, East and West, North and South,
the opinion prevailed everywhere that the way to breed the trotter was
to go to the runner. This universal belief, wholly without foundation,
soon generated the cry, “more running blood in the trotter,” and the
instincts of all the rogues in the country were quickened to make their
pedigrees conform to the popular belief of what was best. This resulted
in a period of fictitious claims, for when a man had a colt out of a
mare of unknown breeding the rule was to say, “dam thoroughbred,” and
if the owner was unusually conscientious and knew the breeding for one
or two crosses, he would give them correctly, but seldom failed to
tack on two or three thoroughbred crosses that were wholly fictitious.
After all my years of experience with the pedigrees of horses, it is my
deliberate and candid opinion that no word in the English language has
been so much abused as the word “thoroughbred.” It has been the medium
of more deceptions and downright falsehoods than any other word in the
vocabulary. For many years it was the word above all other words that the
unscrupulous jockey employed to defraud his inexperienced victim. And if
there had been no strong hand to take the improper and dishonest use of
the word by the throat there would be no breed of trotters, and the whole
business of breeding and developing the trotting horse would be to-day
just where it was thirty years ago. The old, threadbare stock argument
was in everybody’s mouth, to the effect that “Messenger was an English
thoroughbred and he founded a family of trotters, hence any other English
thoroughbred could do the same thing under the same circumstances.” When
this ancient formula was submitted to the test it was found to be fatally
unsound at both ends, as has been shown in another chapter. Messenger
was found to be far short of being thoroughbred in his inheritance;
forty other English thoroughbreds had been in competition with him and
bred upon the same mares, yet no other English thoroughbred, in the
experiences of a hundred and fifty years, ever founded a family of
trotters. The two ablest advocates of “more running blood in the trotter”
that this country has produced, Mr. Charles J. Foster and Mr. Joseph
Cairn Simpson, when challenged to produce an English thoroughbred horse
that had founded a family of trotters, conceded the whole contention by
naming Bishop’s Hambletonian and Mambrino, both sons of Messenger and
the principal channels through which Messenger had founded his family
of trotters. This knocked all the noise out of the famous formula, and
instead of the braying of an ass we have heard nothing since on this
subject but an occasional and very feeble squeak of a mouse.
In the earlier portion of the period when the American Trotter was
beginning to assume the shape and character of a breed, the term
“thoroughbred,” meaning English racing blood, was adhered to with
astonishing tenacity, as an indispensable element in the breeding of the
trotter. A few men of clear and independent minds commenced to study
the question in the light of experiences, and they were not long in
reaching the truth; but, as a rule, the less a man knew of the question,
whether a breeder or a writer, the more blatant and vociferous he was
in maintaining that all trotters were dependent for their speed on the
blood of the “thoroughbred English race horse.” When Maud S. made her
four-year-old record and astonished the world, the acclamations of this
class went up in tremendous volume pointing to the Boston blood of her
grandam as the element that did it. Now, it never has been shown, and it
never can be shown, that there was a single drop of Boston’s blood in
her veins. Besides all this, Boston was not a thoroughbred horse, for
neither his sire nor his grandam was thoroughbred. A curious phase of
the interest attached to the mere word “thoroughbred” was brought out
by a Catholic priest, in New Jersey, in a very cranky and ill-natured
letter addressed to the editor of _Wallace’s Monthly_ protesting against
the frequent use of the term “running-bred” instead of “thoroughbred.”
Priests are generally educated men, but this poor man struck out into a
field where he was entirely ignorant. A horse with two or three immediate
and direct running crosses may be properly and truthfully called “running
bred,” because that blood predominates in his veins, but to be justly
and truthfully called “thoroughly bred” he must have at least five
direct and distinct crosses, and each and every one of them pure and
without any contamination from any other blood. As an illustration of
what results from this definition of the word “thoroughbred,” we may
take the very cream of our old American racing families and not one in
fifty is “thoroughly bred.” American Eclipse was far short of being
thoroughbred, even if we admit that Messenger was thoroughbred. Timoleon,
the greatest son of Sir Archy, had an impossible and untruthful pedigree
on the side of his dam. His great son Boston was short and deficient on
both sides, and with these taints how could he get the great blind horse
Lexington and make him a thoroughbred? These horses were distinctively
“running bred,” but not technically “thoroughbred.” It is not to be
presumed the priest was angry because I preferred not to use a word that
conveyed an untruth and to use one that told the exact truth, for he was
not qualified to judge which was true and which was not true, but like
hundreds of others he feared the value of his property might be affected
by the refusal to apply the term “thoroughbred” to some supposable cross
in some of his pedigrees.
“More running blood in the trotter” was a “fad” that has been completely
extinguished by all the experiences of later years. It was a freak that
never had any foundation either in nature or in reason. No animal can
transmit to his posterity qualities and capacities which he has not
inherited, or which he does not possess by acquirement. This is a rule
which seems to be perfectly plain to the comprehension of everybody, and
in observation and experience it proves itself true every day of the
year. To breed a horse that can go fast at the trotting or pacing gait
we must go to the horse and the blood that has gone fast at one or the
other of these gaits. It seems like a needless work to expend any time
or space on what is self-evident in all human experiences. A few years
ago I offered a money reward, of sufficient amount to justify some labor
in a search, to any one who would report to me any thoroughbred running
horse, with the proofs, that had ever made a trotting record of a mile in
three minutes, and there was no response. Some years later I renewed the
offer, doubling the amount of the former offer, and still there came no
response. I regret now that I did not make the offer for a mile in four
minutes instead of three, for I very much doubt whether there ever was a
thoroughbred horse able to trot a mile in four minutes. What is the use,
then, of giving further attention to the consideration of the value of
thoroughbred running blood in the trotter?
But after conceding that the instinct to stick to the trot and the step
of the trotter must come from the trotter, the advocates of “more running
blood in the trotter” plant all their heavy guns on the proposition that
running blood is needed to give the trotter more courage, endurance,
and beauty of form. In all the past years we have had so many grand
panegyrics on the will power and undying courage of the “courser of
the desert” that they have become threadbare and have an “ancient and
fish-like smell,” and we would prefer to exchange them for something
more recent and practical. When we go to a race meeting and see so many
contests at various distances less than a mile, a few at something over
a mile, and all these merely single dashes, we naturally and justly
conclude that the distance of ground to be covered in each contest is
adjusted to the courage and stamina of the racers. I cannot conceive of
any fairer criterion by which to determine the measure of gameness and
pluck of running horses than simply to consider the distance chosen, and
that for a single dash. Trainers and owners know just where each horse
will quit, if hard pressed, and they will not enter him in any distance
beyond the point where they know his courage will fail. With the data of
distances for these single dashes already fixed for the accommodation of
horses with different degrees of staying qualities, and after making a
liberal allowance for age and lack of condition, we seem to have a solid
foundation for a safe conclusion that the crucial test of the speed of
the average race horse fails him before he reaches the first mile-post.
When the trotter starts out for his summer’s campaign he has no choice
as to the length of his races, and he is not looking about for single
dashes of four, five, six or seven furlongs, but enters the field
boldly and throws down the glove to all the best strains of trotting
and pacing blood. Every race will be mile heats, best two in three or
three in five, and it often requires six, seven or eight heats before
the victor is declared. This experience is repeated, week after week,
during the whole season. Such a weekly experience as this, continued
through twenty consecutive weeks, would probably destroy the best and
stoutest running horse now living. This is the test to which the trotter
is subjected, and no man can say it lacks in severity in determining his
qualities as a race horse, in his stamina, his courage and his gameness.
In touching this point I will here take the liberty of entering my
protest against what I consider the unnecessary severity of this test. We
want all these tests, and from the standpoint of the breeder we cannot
progress without them, but we want them to stop short of injury to the
animal. When a contest is drawn out to six, eight or ten heats, it not
only becomes cruel as a sport, but it is liable to inflict irreparable
injury to the soundness of the animal. Unsoundness, either external or
internal, is liable to result from all such abuses. This is a dominant
fact, and while we may not be able to see the injury with the eye, we
are likely to see the evil results in the progeny. Animals of the kind
most likely to be subjected to this over-severity of test are the hope
of the future as producers, and by all means wise and possible we should
seek to preserve them in their pristine soundness and vigor. As breeders
we cannot afford to let them go without development and test, neither
can we afford to impair or destroy their producing qualities, in the
test. This can be done only by shortening the race; not the distance of
ground, but the number of heats that can be trotted. With an inflexible
rule that not more than five heats should be trotted in any race, and
that at the conclusion of the fifth heat the money should be divided
according to the places of the contestants, I would not be particular as
to whether the race was for the best two in three, or the best three in
five. The invariable results have been that in long-drawn-out contests
of many heats there have been bargains and combinations for or against
certain horses, and all managed by and in the interest of the so-called
“speculators.” If this were done the combinations of the gamblers would
be checkmated, the cruelty of the sport would be eliminated, and our best
horses would come through the campaigns ready and fit to propagate their
species.
In breeding for a particular purpose or qualification all experience
goes to show that the elements entering into the new creature must be
carefully selected as possessing the quality that we seek to propagate.
Nobody would think of breeding a running mare to a trotting horse if
he was seeking to breed a running colt. No thoughtful and intelligent
man would think of breeding a running horse upon a trotting mare if he
were seeking to breed a trotting colt. The runner to the runner and the
trotter to the trotter has been demonstrated ten thousand times as the
right way. The cross-bred or half-and-half-bred animal may be something
of a trotter or something of a runner, doing neither well; and this
uncertainty never can become a certainty as to which it may be till
you try him. The evil of half-and-half breeding does not cease with
the life of the animal, for the division in his own inheritance will
manifest itself in his progeny for generations, or till it is bred out.
But, strange as it may seem, there are still a few old men living who,
from pride of opinion advanced in their younger days, still maintain
that trotting speed must come from the “thoroughbred” and “point with
pride” to the great horse Palo Alto as the complete illustration of
their belief. In relation to the breeding of Palo Alto I will here tell
a little story, premising that I neither accept it as true nor reject it
as false, for I know nothing about it. The late Mr. William H. Wilson,
of Cynthiana, Kentucky, was in many respects a remarkable man. He was
full of energy and push, and his brain seemed to teem with formidable
ideas, chiefly relating to his prospects, and the management of his own
business. He was intelligent in horse matters, and very well informed
on local horse history. He did a great deal of work for me in the way
of straightening out tangled skeins, and in tracing obscure pedigrees.
In this way I came to know Mr. Wilson very well, and as I never found
him wrong on these questions I came to place great confidence in his
word and his judgment in all pedigree matters that he had investigated.
Some time about 1889, probably, he asked me to investigate the pedigree
of Dame Winnie, the dam of Palo Alto, for, he said, he had every reason
to believe she was not by Planet, but by a trotting-bred horse that
he named, but that name has escaped me. I replied that I had not time
then, but I would think about it. Some months afterward he was again
in my office and he again urged the investigation. My reply was that
there were some very upright and honest men in Kentucky as well as some
great rogues, and if I were to undertake to investigate this pedigree
the rogues could get forty men, if so many were necessary, for a bottle
of whisky or a half-dollar a head, who could remember just what it was
necessary to remember, and forget just what it was necessary to forget
in order to prove that the mare was by Planet. I recalled my experience
with suborned evidence in the past, and knew just what I might expect
in the future, and so I had concluded to make no more investigations in
certain portions of Kentucky until I had an opportunity to cross-examine
the witnesses. Dame Winnie was a plain, common-looking mare, with
nothing about her to indicate high breeding, and if we lay aside Mr.
Wilson’s story and accept the pedigree as usually given she was strongly
running bred, but at several points in her pedigree she fails of being
thoroughbred. The internal evidence as to the breeding of this mare,
brought to light in the performance of her produce, suggests very
strongly the probability that she possessed some trotting blood, from
some source not far removed. She has five representatives in the 2:30
list, and this of itself strongly supports Mr. Wilson’s untold story,
that I would not listen to. In passing I will say I would be glad to
listen to it now; for this solid foundation of experience is so stoutly
corroborative of what he suggested as to justify an effort to reach the
exact truth. When it was known in Kentucky that Senator Stanford had sent
his representative down there to gather up a lot of “thoroughbred” mares
from which to breed trotters in California, every dealer in the State had
just what he wanted. He was looking for pedigrees, and it was a very easy
matter to shape up the pedigrees just to suit him.
Whatever may have been the breeding of his dam, Palo Alto was a great
horse, but he came to his speed slowly, and this would seem to indicate
that if his dam had any trotting inheritance it was weak in the direction
of attaining a high rate of speed. From the day he was weaned till the
day he died he was Senator Stanford’s idol, and with this horse as an
object lesson he was going to teach the world how to breed the trotter.
At two years old he was driven a mile privately in 2:22¾, and his owner,
feeling that his dream was realized in breeding the greatest horse the
world had produced, named him “Palo Alto,” as he deemed him worthy of
being at the head of the greatest breeding establishment of the world.
He was in the hands of the most skillful and careful of all trainers,
and the training went on without respite, year after year. When four
years old he went through the Eastern circuits, winning the larger share
of his purses, and making a record of 2:20¼. Now let us consider for a
moment whether the Senator did not make a great mistake and select the
wrong horse as the typical representative of his great establishment. In
1888 he bred a colt by Electioneer out of Lula Wilkes, grandam the famous
trotting mare Lula, 2:15, by Norman, etc., intensely trotting bred, and
when he was three years old he made a record of 2:16. This is better than
2:20¼ as a four-year-old, for this fellow had not to take one-half the
training that Palo Alto was subjected to. The next year he bred another
colt by Electioneer called Arion, out of a mare by Nutwood; she out of a
sister to Voltaire, 2:20¼, by Tattler, 2:26; and she out of the famous
trotting brood mare Young Portia, by Mambrino Chief; and the next dam
Portia by the pacer Roebuck. This colt came out and trotted a mile in
2:10¾ as a two-year-old. The four-year-old had a great “boom” and was
considered by many as the phenomenal colt of his year, but when we place
his record of 2:20¼ beside the 2:16 of the three-year-old, it looks very
sickly, and when we compare it with the 2:10¾ of the two-year-old it is
shaded into a deathly pallor. The four-year-old is largely the result of
skill and art; the two-year-old is the result of nature. Arion is the
best horse, by the record, that the world has ever produced, and the
Senator was mistaken in his dream. We must judge of the value of a fast
performance by the degree of naturalness which it represents and the
measure of its freedom from the arts of the trainer. The “born trotter”
is what we want, and at two years old Arion, or any other colt, was at
the right age to determine whether a fast performance was the result of
nature or of art.
It is a fact well known to everybody that some trotting-bred stallions
have shown greater power in controlling the action of their progeny than
others that seemed to be equally well bred. If out of the great mass of
stallions, past and present, that have been more or less successful as
trotting progenitors, we pick out thirty of the very best, as shown by
their progeny, it will probably surprise many of my readers to learn
that only three of that number have been able to triumph in the supreme
test of getting trotters out of running-bred mares. Of these three
Electioneer stands first, Almont second, and Pilot Jr. third. After
making all allowance for the anxiety of certain Californians and certain
Kentuckians to prove the need of “more running blood in the trotter,”
and their manifest willingness to help along with pedigrees in that
direction, I am fully convinced that these three horses, in some cases,
were able to meet and overcome the hostile elements of the galloper.
Not in every case, certainly, nor in a majority of cases. When Senator
Stanford was showing me the step of Palo Alto, on his own track, as
a three-year-old, I remarked, “Well, Electioneer certainly triumphed
in that case,” and the Senator replied, “Yes, but none of my other
stallions can do it, and there are some thoroughbred mares upon which
Electioneer can’t do it.” When approached by others on this subject in
the riper years of his experience, he was in the habit of replying:
“There are thoroughbreds and thoroughbreds; some of them will produce
trotters to Electioneer, and some will not.” He accepted everything
as thoroughbred that had been bought by his agents as thoroughbred,
whether in Kentucky or California, and he claimed to be able to pick out
those that would produce trotters by their appearance. When pressed to
give the characteristics by which he was able to make his selections,
he spoke of the shape of the animal, in a general way, and especially
by the head and the expression of countenance. In selecting his mares
to put in the trotting stud by their “appearance” he would naturally
select such as had the “appearance” of trotters, and as he personally
knew no more about their pedigrees or the inheritance of the animals
than the mares knew themselves, he was very liable to be deceived in
the breeding of the animals as he selected them. In selecting a mare by
“appearance” as indicating that she might throw trotters to Electioneer,
there is a strong suggestion that this “appearance” may have been a
legitimate “inheritance” sought to be covered up by that sadly abused
term “thoroughbred.” Whether this suggestion ever entered the Senator’s
mind I have no means of determining. But whether some of the mares called
“thoroughbred” had really a mixed inheritance or not, the fact remains
that the three horses named above did succeed in getting some trotters
from mares that were strongly running bred. Then the question arises: Why
did these three horses succeed where all others failed? We are not able
to give an answer to this question that is complete and irrefutable,
for there is so much in the laws of generation that we do not and cannot
know. Take two brothers, for example, and one is a great success and the
other a great failure, and often the failure is the better formed and
the better looking horse of the two. All that science teaches us here is
that one took after some ancestor, near or remote, that was good, and
the other after some ancestor that was not good. Electioneer, Almont
and Pilot Jr. all had short pedigrees composed exclusively of trotting
and pacing blood, except possibly a few drops of running blood that may
have trickled down from the runner through trotting or pacing channels.
Their instincts to stick to the trot had been encouraged and more or
less completely developed. Electioneer and Almont both had pacing blood
some distance away, and Pilot Jr., so far as we know, had nothing but
pacing blood, and yet he never paced a step in his life. This embraces
all we know of the three horses that proved themselves the most prepotent
in overcoming all antagonisms of race or blood. Others equally great,
no doubt, have come up since their day, but as breeding is now better
understood and as the laws of nature are now more carefully followed,
tests of this kind are not often made.
After all the “wiring in and wiring out” of the tortuous advocates of
“more running blood in the trotter” had found that their efforts had
borne no fruit and that all intelligent breeders had left their theories
away behind, a remarkably brilliant genius struck out a new line of
thought and argument, which unfortunately died “a bornin’” just as
the attention of all intelligent breeders was turning away from “more
running blood in the trotter” as a senseless “fad,” and looking to the
pacer as a possible source of increased trotting speed. In formulating
and exploiting his idea, our genius seems to have reasoned after this
manner: “The crisis is here, the breeders are all turning away from the
thoroughbred as a source of trotting speed and considering the pacer, and
now if I can convince them that the pacer is at least half-thoroughbred
I will beat the standard and win the day.” Here we have the motive and
the subject, and now we are ready for the manipulation. In due time
the article appeared, and I must do the writer the justice of saying
I never have been fully satisfied that he believed a single word of
it himself. He starts out to show that the pace is not the result of
hereditary transmission but the result of “structural incongruity.” He
declared that this “structural incongruity” is the result of breeding
the thoroughbred horse on the slab-sided, ill-shapen mares of the West
and Southwest. From the inheritance, part of the animal is structurally
formed to run and the other part structurally formed to trot, and
between the two a compromise is made on the pace. In this “structural
incongruity,” between the two parts the pacing gait originated, and hence
whatever speed the pacer may possess comes from the “thoroughbred;” and,
therefore, of necessity, whatever speed the trotter gets from the pacer
comes from the “thoroughbred.” There are many humbugs in the literature
of the horse, but this is the craziest humbug I have ever met with.
What a pity he left his work unfinished, and failed to tell us which
end of the horse was running bred and which end trotting bred, so that
we might locate the “incongruity” and cut it out! But to look at this
“structural incongruity” seriously, it lacks but little of a scandal on
the intelligence and honesty of American writers on the horse. Here is
a gentleman of reputed intelligence, who wields a facile pen and has
been writing on breeding subjects for about thirty years, and much of
his work was well done; and now at the close of the nineteenth century
he undertakes to tell us how the pacer originated in this country. The
veriest tyro in horse history knows that pacers abounded in England in
the twelfth century, and indeed long before that. Every colony in this
country was full of pacers a hundred years before the first thoroughbred
crossed the Atlantic. But wild and absurd theories can safely be left to
the public judgment.
It required several years of labor and iteration to convince the breeding
public that the trot and the pace were simply two forms of one and the
same gait. When first advanced it was received by the more intelligent
breeders as an abstraction that had nothing practical in it, while those
of less ability to think for themselves only laughed at it. Since then
the inevitable processes of experience have demonstrated its truth,
and the question of today is how to separate these two forms of the
same gait and to breed either form, as we may desire, as a distinct and
certainly transmissible gait. With a few it will still remain a matter of
indifference whether the colt comes a pacer or a trotter, but with the
great mass of breeders the question of profit in breeding the harness
horse must be considered. Everybody knows that in the market for road
horses the clean-stepping trotter is worth more than the smooth-gliding
pacer. This is not a question to be determined by fashion, but a fact
of universal experience that the trotting action is better suited to
harness and the pacing action better suited to the saddle. Fashions may
change, but these two facts are unchangeable, for they are founded in
the nature and mechanism of the two forms of action. The difficulties
in the way of separating the diagonal from the lateral form of the trot
are very great, and there is no use or wisdom in attempting to blink
this fact. Speed at both forms of the gait comes from the same source,
the same blood, the same inheritance; and source, blood and inheritance,
in a breeding sense, are the hardest things in nature to overcome. So
far as experience teaches there is but one method or treatment that has
ever been successful in wiping out the pacer. In the first half of the
seventeenth century England was full of pacers, and about a hundred
years later she did not have one. The trouble about this remedy is that
the trotters were wiped out also, and today England has neither a pacer
nor a trotter. When she now wants a trotter she has to send to this
country and get some of the blood of the little despised pacer that was
shipped from her own shores in the early colonial days. The blood of the
Saracenic horse has not lost its potency as a pacing expunger, as shown
by modern experiments, and all our breeders have to do is to use it in
copious effusions, and we will soon be rid of the pacer, and the trotter
along with him. The pacer and the trotter are never found separate from
each other, so far as my information goes. In Russia they breed trotters
methodically, and they have a full supply of very fast pacers that are
used as shaft horses in their droskies. As in the past, so in the future,
we never need expect to see the two forms of the gait entirely separated.
Our people, however, are not ready, and as long as the horse is used for
business and pleasure never will be ready to dispense with the trotter;
and even though some considerable number might deplore the presence and
prominence of the pacer, every one of them would welcome him with great
joy if they knew he was a necessary adjunct of the trotter. When we
consider the problem of reducing the ratio of pacers and increasing the
ratio of trotters in what we produce, there is so much that is old and
still imperfectly known in what we incorrectly call our “earlier” period
of trotting that we find nothing encouraging in the study. The origin
of the principal trotters of the early part of this century, except
the direct descendants of Messenger, was so sedulously concealed that
it was entirely natural for so many men to conclude that the trotter
was not bred, but made by the trainer. When Flora Temple was the queen
nobody knew that her speed came from a pacer. Old Kentucky Hunter was a
very fast pacer. When Pelham was king nobody knew he had been a pacer.
When Highland Maid eclipsed all records nobody knew she was pacing bred
and had been a pacer herself. When Vermont Black Hawk was the most
popular sire of his day nobody knew that his dam was “Old Narragansett,”
a pacer. When Ethan Allen stood at the head of all young trotters the
old grey mare, his dam, was, and still remains, entirely unknown, but
everybody believes that a large share of his speed came from that mare.
Andrew Jackson, the head of the great Clay family, was out of a fast
pacing mare. And thus we might extend the list indefinitely. But away
back, more than a hundred years before the period of which we are here
speaking, pacing and trotting races had become so numerous that they had
to be suppressed by legislative enactment. More than two hundred years
ago there were pacing races and trotting races in this country, and then
as now it seems evident that the form of the action of the prospective
colt, whether lateral or diagonal, was uncertain until it appeared. This
condition of uncertainty about the secrets of the womb has existed for
centuries, as it exists today; and if we were furnished a complete list
of all the great trotters of the last two decades that were born pacers
we would hardly be willing to believe our own senses. The following short
list of such animals as have gone fast at both forms of the gait will
serve to illustrate the oneness of the two forms:
PACING. TROTTING.
Jay-Eye-See, bl. g. by Dictator 2:06¼ 2:10
Direct, bl. h. by Director 2:05¼ 2:18¼
Monbars, b. h. by Eagle Bird 2:16¾ 2:11¾
George St. Clair, b. h. by Betterton 2:10¼ 2:15¼
Heir-at-Law, bl. h. by Mambrino King 2:07½ 2:12
Ottinger, br. g. by Dorsey’s Nephew 2:11½ 2:09¾
Bert Oliver, b. h. by Ashland Wilkes 2:08¾ 2:19¼
Vassar, gr. h. by Vatican 2:07 2:21¾
Pilgrim, br. h. by Acolyte 2:10½ 2:20¾
San Pedro, bl. g. by Del Sur 2:10¾ 2:14½
Wardwell, b. g. by Almont Jr. 2:16¼ 2:14¼
Gazette, b. h. by Onward 2:09¾ 2:23¾
Welcome, b. h. by Arthur Wilkes 2:10½ 2:27¼
Story’s Clay, b. b. by Everett Clay 2:14¾ 2:18¼
Captain Crouch, ch. h. by General Smith 2:13 2:25
Red Bud, ch. h. by Redfern 2:12½ 2:14½
Cleveland S., b. h. by Montgomery 2:10 2:24
Connor, bl. h. by C. F. Clay 2:14 2:13¼
Babette, b. m. by Sir John 2:12¼ 2:22¼
This exhibit might be further extended, but the foregoing will suffice
for the purpose intended. The only remark that seems needed by way of
explanation is that all the animals named, except two (San Pedro and
Wardwell), made their records first as trotters.
In surveying the whole situation there is but little encouragement in
attempting to solve the problem of how to reduce the ratio of the pacers
and at the same time avoid the reduction of the speed of the trotters.
The central point in the problem is the development of speed; and so
long as the pacer comes to his speed so much quicker and easier than the
trotter, and so long as the best pacer is a little faster, as he has
always been, than the best trotter, there is no probability that his
speed will not be developed. All efforts at repression or exclusion of
the pacer from contesting for prizes at public meetings would be futile
and, in a sense, unjust. Moreover, this would not be in the province of
the breeder and he must work out his plans within the boundaries of his
own domain. The laws of heredity apply to either of the two forms of the
trot—the lateral and the diagonal—just as certainly as they apply to the
two forms united. This is the breeder’s opportunity, and if he grasps it
he will make progress slowly but surely. In his breeding selections he
must lay it down as an inviolable rule that all pacers, especially pacers
with their speed developed, must be excluded, no difference how strongly
they may be bred in the best trotting lines. If a horse produces some
fillies that, like Maud S., Sunol and hundreds of others, are halfway,
or more than halfway, inclined to pace, he must rigorously keep them at
the trot and nothing but the trot, unless he sells them. He must study
intelligently the pedigrees and produce of the generations away back,
and make such selections as are most likely to promote his object and
least likely to violate the rule laid down. Of all the varieties of
the horse on the face of the globe the American trotter is the typical
harness horse. Our civilization no longer requires the saddle to climb
through mountain passes, and to follow seldom-trodden paths through the
wilderness. For either business or pleasure we travel on wheels, and we
want the bold, bounding trotter to propel us. The pacer is the early and
only saddle horse in the world, but he is not a harness horse. Aside from
the few that will be used as gambling machines, his value will recede
while that of the trotter will always advance. In the hands of a man of
intelligent and fixed purpose it is certainly possible to breed a family
of trotters in which the appearance of a pacer from birth would be of
rare occurrence, and the longer such careful selections and purposes are
continued the more rare will be the recurrence of the lateral habit of
action.
That the development of the speed of the parents was very important, if
not necessary to the increased speed of the progeny, was a proposition
that was long disputed. Generally, as on other questions, each man
argued it from the standpoint of his own stable, but not a few men of
clear minds took that side of the question without regard to the potency
of the law of heredity. In the early stages of the discussion of this
question it was a difficult one to handle effectively. At that time very
few sires, and still a less proportion of dams, had ever been regularly
developed as trotters, hence the field for generalization was narrow
and many of the instances quoted were disputed. For a time the battle
raged quite fiercely around Hambletonian, as he was the most prominent
stallion of that period, and if a man was trying to build up another
family he would rave till he got black in the face against “Bill Rysdyk’s
bull.” It is but just to say that the man who led in all this froth and
fury against Hambletonian was engaged in breeding what he called “Clay
Arabs,” and after dodging his creditors for a number of years his last
hoof was sold from him by the sheriff. On the other hand, Hambletonian
made his master a rich man, and he left a large estate. Hambletonian was
only partially developed, but sufficient to show he was a fast colt for
his period. (For full particulars see his history in another chapter.)
Abdallah was a very great sire of speed and he was not a developed
trotter, but his dam, old Amazonia, was quite fully developed. She won
many races and was the fastest trotter of her day. Whether her speed came
from a fast pacing ancestry, or whether it came from the reputed “son of
Messenger,” as stated when she was bought near Philadelphia, never can be
determined. The “son of Messenger” story seemed to be straight, but her
form was coarse and plain, and her legs were so hairy that many who knew
her best condemned the story; hence, all we can say about her is simply
that she was a fast developed trotter. Andrew Jackson had but little
trotting inheritance from his sire, and his dam was a fast pacing mare of
unknown breeding, but his speed was very fully developed as a trotter,
and he became the progenitor of the Clay and the Long Island Black Hawk
families, that became famous in trotting history. While this reasoning
was true in experience and sound under the canons of science, it was not
strong and convincing, for the one and only reason that the basis of the
generalization was too narrow and lacked in a sufficient number of cases
to convince the understanding of the skeptical. We have had to wait for
the accumulation of the experiences of a number of years, and now we have
the evidence that is so complete as to be really startling and which no
man can gainsay. The following little table embraces all the breeding
farms in this country that have produced three or more trotters with
records of 2:15 or better, and here the rate of speed is certainly high
enough and the foundation is certainly broad enough to furnish just and
safe conclusions:
Leland Stanford 18
Fashion Stud Farm 13
William Corbitt 9
Wm. H. Wilson 8
C. J. Hamlin 7
Glenview Farm 6
Timothy Anglin 5
Henry C. Jewett 4
Wm. C. France 4
Woodburn Farm 4
Robert G. Stoner 4
R. S. Veech 3
C. W. Williams 3
Highland Farm (Lee, Mass.) 3
Fairlawn Farm 3
E. W. Ayers 3
Charles Backman 3
George H. Ely 3
Mrs. S. L. Stout 3
Monroe Salisbury 3
Quite a number of other breeders have produced one or two that have made
records in 2:15 or better, but I think the above list embraces all that
have bred three or more with trotting records of 2:15 or better. The
table will be a surprise to everybody, but I doubt whether it will be a
greater surprise to anybody than it is to myself. At the head of the list
stands the late Senator Stanford’s great establishment with eighteen to
its credit, but this is not a fair basis of comparison with any other
establishment in the whole country, for he had about three hundred mares
in the trotting department of his breeding stud—about six times as large
as the average of the larger studs of the country. The average number
of horses in training, the year round, was about eighty, exclusive of
yearlings and the kindergarten. In attempting to institute a comparison,
therefore, with the average breeders of the country, we might as well
compare the daily receipts of John Wanamaker’s store with those of the
little green-grocer on the corner. But at the head of this establishment
stood the great Electioneer with his strong breeding and trotting speed
well developed, and indeed, in many respects the greatest horse of his
generation. He was the sire of eleven in the list, and the remainder were
either by his sons or out of his daughters.
Mr. Henry N. Smith, of New York, a prominent Wall Street man, became
greatly interested in trotting sport, and in 1868 he organized a trotting
stable of his own, which contained some remarkable animals, as will be
seen below. His stable was very successful, and this success naturally
increased his attachment to the trotting interests. He then determined
to establish a breeding farm, and about the year 1869 he purchased the
famous old Fashion Course adjoining Trenton, New Jersey, embracing one
hundred and forty-five acres of land and provided with an excellent
mile track and much stabling that had been constructed years before for
running horses. This property he very appropriately named the “Fashion
Stud Farm,” and on it he placed the grandest assemblage of developed
trotters, for breeding purposes only, that had ever been brought together
in this or any other country. His stallions were Jay Gould, 2:20½,
Tattler, 2:26, and Gen. Knox, 2:31½. This was Knox’s fastest record, but
it was known he had trotted miles, in races, faster than this. The speed
of all three horses was developed, and it is evident at a glance that
there was only one first-class horse among them. But the great strength
of the establishment was in the grand galaxy of mares, some of which I
will enumerate, namely. Goldsmith Maid, 2:14, Lady Thorn, 2:18¼, Lucy,
2:18¼, Lady Maud, 2:18¼, Rosalind, 2:21¾, Belle Strickland, 2:26, Western
Girl, 2:27, Idol, 2:27, Big Mary, 2:28½, Daisy Burns, 2:28, Music’s Dam
(that had produced 2:21½ speed), besides others with slower records or
known to have had their speed developed as fast road mares, making in all
about thirty mares on the farm, and Mr. Smith claimed that every one of
them had shown more or less speed as trotters.
Mr. Smith neither knew nor cared much about pedigrees, in a general
sense, and when you came to talk to him about “nicks” and “trotting
pitch” and all that kind of tomfoolery, his mind simply recurred to
the old adage uttered generations ago: “Trot father, trot mother, trot
colt.” His whole philosophy was wrapped up in the one central truth that
the horse that could go out and trot fast, when bred on the mare that
could go out and trot fast, would produce a colt that would go out and
trot fast. This was sufficient for him or indeed for anybody else, for
it contains and expresses the whole substance of the laws of heredity.
Mr. Smith’s great mares acquired in their training and development new
characters and new capacities which they never would have possessed had
it not been for the care and skill expended in their training. Here we
touch the very marrow of a question around which the scientists of today
are warring. Darwin taught that such acquisitions were transmissible,
of the truth of which I have no doubt, but a post-Darwinian school has
arisen which controverts this position, and claims that it weakens and
destroys the whole evolution theory of creation. But it matters not
about the hypothesis of evolution concerning things we know, for it
is simply an attempt to show how all things might have been created
without a Creator. I have read a great deal about evolution and the
transmissibility of acquired characters, but in all I have read I never
have met with a lesson so broad and so strong as that furnished by Henry
N. Smith’s great mares, proving that acquired characters are transmitted.
In instituting a comparison between the high-class products of the Palo
Alto and the Fashion Stud Farms, it seems to be necessary to place the
premier stallions of the two side and side. They were half-brothers on
the side of the sire, but Electioneer had the greatest speed-producing
dam of her generation. She was a fast natural trotter herself, and was
out of a fast and fully developed trotter. Jay Gould was out of a good
road mare by American Star, but nobody has ever said she had any speed,
and she was out of a nondescript mare that we know nothing about. Gould’s
dam never produced any other trotter with a reputable rate of speed, so
far as I have been able to learn. Electioneer was trained and developed
by Mr. Backman, but he never was in a race, and consequently he has no
official record. After he was taken to Palo Alto he was given quite
regular work, and it is beyond all doubt that when in stud condition he
could show a quarter in a little better than a 2:20 gait. The difference
in the rate of speed, therefore, as between the two horses was not very
great, but whatever it was must go to the credit of Jay Gould. But the
offspring of Electioneer had a very great advantage over those of Jay
Gould in the methodical and skillful development of their speed. In his
maternal inheritance as a trotter, as already indicated, Electioneer
had a marked superiority, and on an equally high class of developed
mares he would have far outstripped his rival. Now, with this attempt
at a clean-cut description of the two horses, we are ready to consider
the question in its arithmetical elements, and it will be found a plain
question of “simple proportion” which anybody can solve in a minute, as
follows: “If the Fashion Stud Farm from thirty mares produced thirteen
trotters with public records of 2:15 or better, how many of equal
capacity should the Palo Alto Farm have produced from three hundred
mares?” The answer is one hundred and thirty, but the facts, up to the
close of 1896, furnish us with the beggarly number of eighteen.
The grand assemblage of so many great trotters at the Fashion Stud Farm,
and all for the purpose of breeding, was the subject of much comment
among breeders from one end of the land to the other, and not a few
pronounced it all wrong and that it would be succeeded by failure. Mr.
Smith lacked some of the elements that go toward making a man popular,
and hence, in many cases, there was not much sympathy between him and
his brother breeders, but he held tenaciously to the central truth that
the way to breed high-class trotters was to mate high-class trotters.
His experience has clearly demonstrated the soundness of this canon of
breeding, and it has just as clearly demonstrated the unsoundness of
the notion that high-class trotters can be bred from animals that never
trotted and never could be made to trot. The law, as we have taught it
for years, has been vindicated, and that by experiences so wide and so
complete that it can no longer be controverted. Mr. Smith has achieved a
great honor, and as a producer of high-class speed he stands at the head
of all American trotting-horse breeders.