XXX. INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES.—(Continued.)
How Belle of Wabash got her pedigree—Specimen of pedigree making in that day and locality—Search for the dam of Thomas Jefferson—True origin and history of Belle of Wabash—Facts about the old-time gelding Prince—The truth about Waxy, the grandam of Sunol—Remarkable attempts to make a pedigree out of nothing—How “Jim” Eoff worked a “tenderfoot”—Pedigree of American Eclipse—Pedigree of Boston—Tom Bowling and Aaron Pennington—Chenery’s Gray Eagle—Pedigree of George Wilkes in doubt.
At Louisville, Kentucky, October, 1860, a ten-mile race was trotted which excited a good deal of local interest and comment. The contestants in this race were entered as follows:
“Captain Magowan, by imp. Sovereign, dam by American Eclipse.” “Gipsy Queen, by Wagner, dam by imp. Glencoe.” “Belle of Wabash (Indiana Belle), by Bassinger, dam by imp. William.”
The names of the parties making the entries are given in the entries of the first and second, and the Louisville Journal of the week before remarks that “J. J. Alexander will represent his State honorably with the Belle of Indiana.” Captain Magowan held the lead from start to finish, and at the end of the eighth mile, some say the seventh, Belle of Wabash was drawn. It will be observed that, so far as given, each one of these animals was furnished with a first-class race-horse pedigree; for it was then held as firmly as any religious tenet that no horse could go that distance at any gait unless he was strictly thoroughbred, and, in Kentucky, if he did not have such a pedigree they gave him one on the spot. At that time they never bothered their heads hunting up the breeder of an animal to learn how it was bred. They simply wanted to see the performance and then make the pedigree to suit it. These three pedigrees were all bogus in all their elements, and I knew so little of the ways of the horse world, at that time, that I accepted and recorded them as genuine.
Captain Magowan was a roan gelding, willful and bad tempered, and all that seems to be known about his origin is the conceded fact that he was bred in Kentucky and that he was probably descended from the tribe of Copperbottoms, or possibly the Tom Hals. The roan color prevailed in both tribes and the horse himself looked like the Copperbottoms.
Gipsy Queen, at the time of the above race in 1860, was owned by a “sporting man” named George Bidwell, of Chicago, or at least she raced under his direction. About the time of this race, Mr. Thomas J. Vail bought the mare and took her to Hartford, Connecticut. He bred her to Toronto Chief and she produced a black colt. The mare and colt afterward passed into the hands of Mr. William B. Smith, and this colt grew up to be the famous Thomas Jefferson—“The Whirlwind of the East.” In connection with Mr. Smith I devoted a good deal of labor to a futile search for the origin and pedigree of this mare, and the result of our search amounted to nothing more than a reasonable probability that she was bred at Rochester, New York; was got by a son or grandson of Vermont Black Hawk and was taken from there to Chicago. This latter point of the transfer to Chicago seemed to be quite circumstantially fixed in Mr. Smith’s mind.
Mr. Allen W. Thomson, of Woodstock, Vermont—a man of great industry and a lover of the truth for the truth’s sake—also made an exhaustive search, and from a recent contribution to the press he evidently thinks he has found it, and possibly he has; but while I generally agree with Mr. Thomson’s conclusions, and prize them as honest and carefully reached, I am forced to dissent in this case. Without going into details, he brings the mare from Williamstown, Vermont, and takes her to Woodstock, Illinois, where she is paired with another black mare, and after passing through two or three hands they at last land in a public livery stable in Chicago, and there the identity of the suppositious Gipsy Queen is lost, and so far as known she never came out of that stable. One or two years afterward a black mare from Chicago, in possession of George Bidwell, appeared in some public races, notably the one given above, and the conclusion is at once reached that this black mare, Gipsy Queen, was the black filly brought from Williamstown, Vermont. To this all the intermediate owners between Williamstown and Behrens’ livery stable were ready to insist that this black mare was the Williamstown filly, but not one of them had ever seen the mare that George Bidwell was handling, and some of them evidently were not worthy of belief if they had seen her. There is the “missing link” between Behrens’ stable and George Bidwell, that has not been supplied and probably never can be supplied. The chances that the Williamstown filly was the real Gipsy Queen, all things considered, seem to stand as about one to a thousand. We must, therefore, conclude that we have no satisfactory information as to how or where this mare was bred.
BELLE OF WABASH.—My first inquiry about this mare was made more than twenty-five years ago, and I did not then suppose that her pedigree would ever become a question of any general interest. In the first volume of the Register I had entered her as a black mare, foaled 1852, got by Bassinger, son of Lieutenant Bassinger, and dam said to be by imported William IV. She was then owned by George C. Stevens of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After her son—The Moor—proved himself a great sire of trotters in getting Beautiful Bells, Sultan, and other good ones, her pedigree became a question of very great importance. As the search for it would occupy more space, in detail, than I can give to it in these pages, I will here give the references in Wallace’s Monthly, where the principal correspondence may be found: Vol. XIV., p. 510; XV., p. 441; XVI., p. 43; and for a complete understanding of the matter the references here given should be carefully examined.
Mr. S. D. Puett, of Indiana, was the first to give me a starting point in the investigation of the pedigree of this mare. In all that had been said about her I never was able to find a man who really knew anything about her origin, until Mr. Puett gave me the address of Cyrus Romaine, who had owned her when very young and handled her for speed. He says “she was sired by a colt from her own dam, that was got by a Copperbottom stallion from Kentucky.” He was not able to give any information about the sire of the dam, and as to the gait of the dam he says: “Her dam was a natural pacer. I cannot say as to her sire, as he was unbroken at the time.” He bought the mare at three years old, handled her one year and sold her to Mr. J. J. Alexander, of Montezuma, of the same county (Parke), in 1856. Mr. Alexander still owned her in 1860 when she trotted in Louisville, and after his death Williams, his trainer, married his widow and still controlled the mare. Mr. Romaine failed to give the name of the breeder of the mare, which will be explained further on. Soon after he wrote, April 26, 1880, he removed to Nebraska and I have not heard from him since. In 1857 she was trained for Mr. Alexander by John Williams on Stroue’s track at Rockville, Indiana, the county seat of Parke County. In 1860 she was entered by Williams in several races at Indianapolis and at other points, and made a record of 2:40. About 1865, or perhaps a year or two earlier, she became the property of George C. Stevens. In his catalogue for 1868 she is entered merely as “Old Belle,” and he know nothing of her origin or history till I gave it to him, along with the humbug pedigree that I had copied from the entries at the Louisville ten-mile race.
Through the kindness of Mr. Puett I received the following letter from Mr. Henry C. Brown, a very reputable business man and a grain dealer in Rockville, Parke County, Indiana. This letter from Mr. Brown has in it such evidence of candor and intelligence that I will here insert it entire:
“DEAR SIR: In reply to your inquiry of the 23d ult., as to what I know of the ‘origin and history of the mare called Belle of Wabash,’ I will give you the following facts:
“In the year 1855, or ’56, I am not positive which, this mare, when a three-year-old, was purchased by Cyrus Romaine, then a resident of this county, of an old farmer in Clay County, this State, paying $85 for her. This farmer lived at that time about a mile and a half north of Brazil, the present county-seat of Clay County.
“As to this farmer’s name, neither myself nor Romaine can tell. He was an old man at that time, and undoubtedly has gone to his reward long ago. Neither do we know anything at all about the pedigree of the mare.
“There is no person living, so far as I or Romaine know, that can tell anything about her ancestors, and in my opinion it would be impossible, at this late day, to find any one in Clay County that could give us any information in regard to her.
“The country around Brazil at that time was almost a wilderness; now the city is spread out, and covers, no doubt, the farm where the mare was foaled. Clay County is now the center of the Indiana coal-fields, and, of course, the entire face of the country about there is changed wonderfully since 1856; consequently it would be almost if not quite impossible to find the exact location.
“After keeping the mare eight or nine months, Romaine sold her to John Alexander, of Montezuma, this county, for $160. Alexander soon after commenced training her, and in about one year I think he, or his trainer, John Williams, took her to Kentucky, and entered her there in some kind of races. Since then you know her history much better than I do.
“At the time Romaine bought the mare he and I were trading in stock together, boarding at the same house and sleeping in the same bed. I mention, this only that you may understand that I know what I am writing about.
“I am truly sorry that I cannot give you the true pedigree of the mare, but it cannot be done. There is no man here or anywhere else that can tell you anything more than I have stated herein.
“You will no doubt think that there is considerable of superfluous matter in this letter, but I do not see how I could tell you what I wanted to in fewer words.
“Everything stated herein is truth, and, if necessary, I am willing to make affidavit to the same at any time.
Very truly yours,
“HENRY C. BROWN.”
Mr. Romaine’s representation amounted to nothing definite or satisfactory about the pedigree of Belle of Wabash, because he failed to give the name and location of her breeder, but Mr. Brown’s letter clears this all up on the grounds that Mr. Romaine really did not know the breeder’s name. Whatever her sire and whatever her dam, we may feel sure they were not trotting-bred, although she was a trotter. We are left, therefore, to conclude that, as in a thousand other cases, this mare was a pacing-bred trotter. The one point that is vital is settled by Mr. Brown, as he was with Mr. Romaine when he bought the mare and knew all about the transaction. He cannot remember the breeder’s name, but he locates him as “living a mile and a half north of Brazil,” and that it is now all cut up into residence and mining lots. This seems to fix the location of the breeder beyond all doubt. This old man seems to have been a pioneer in a very poor county and still a comparative wilderness when this transaction took place. At that time the coal fields had not been touched, and it is wholly beyond belief that he took his unknown old mare out of his own county, across the adjoining county of Parke and into Vermilion County, wherever in it Mr. Weisiger lived, to have her bred to his part-bred stallion Bassinger. And then when he came to sell the foal at three years old for $85, when horses were high, can we believe he would do so without ever mentioning how the filly was bred? The chain of ownership is complete, as she passed from her unnamed breeder to Mr. Romaine, from him to Mr. Alexander, in whose hands she did her trotting, and then to Mr. Williams, and there is no place for the Louisville humbug pedigree to come in. She got her bogus pedigree at the same time and in the same way that Magowan and Gipsy Queen got theirs, and there was not a single shadow of truth in any one of them. The tenacity with which some people hold on to a “thoroughbred” origin for their trotters when the evidence is all against them has long been a mystery to honest folks, who are able to look at things as they are; but it is not difficult to understand the phenomenon when we analyze the reasons for it. First, the owner is anxious to hold on to all he can possibly claim in the way of aristocratic descent with the hope that it may help his sales; and second, there are always a few “featherheads” with golden pockets ready to buy that kind of stuff, because they have never gone far enough in horse history to be able to kick themselves loose from the swaddling clothes of their infantile prejudices.
PRINCE.—The chestnut gelding Prince was one of the great trotters in the early “fifties.” He was pitted against Hero, the pacing son of Harris’ Hambletonian, Lantern and others. As usual at that time he was given a thoroughbred pedigree, which I was then led to accept, without really knowing anything about his origin. He was represented to have been bred in Kentucky, and owned by R. Ten Broeck of that State. Then would naturally follow a thoroughbred pedigree coming from that State, and nobody doubted it for a long time. He was represented to be by Woodpecker, son of Bertrand; dam by imported Sarpedon; grandam said to be thoroughbred. When he started in his ten-mile race against Hero, William T. Porter said he was by Woodpecker, and out of that grew the pedigree above. In the old Spirit of the Times, of October 11, 1856, there is a short communication signed “Hiram,” in which is the only circumstantial account of the origin of Prince that I have ever seen. It is implied by the writer that he was bred by a Mr. Dey, of Chautauqua. County, New York, for he says he was got by “an old chestnut horse called Duroc, from Long Island,” and came of the Dey Mare. It seems that Dey sold the colt to a young man named Worden, and he was first known as “the Worden colt.” He was then sold to Manley Griswold, and from Griswold to Daniel Vanvliet, who sold him in Buffalo to Bennett & Jones (or Thomas), for one thousand dollars, and they sold him to William Whelan, of Long Island, for fifteen hundred dollars. “Hiram” carries the history of the horse no further, as he had then placed him in the hands of the great artists of the trotting world. Of his sire, “Old Duroc,” he says he was taken from Long Island to Villenova, in Chautauqua County, by a merchant of that place, named George Hopkins, and after getting about twenty colts he died. Among these twenty we find Prince and another afterward known as the Walker Horse, which achieved a high local reputation as a sire of trotters and I have frequently met with his cross in the pedigrees of good animals. This showing is not absolutely complete, but it is infinitely better than any other that has over been given to the public.
WAXY, the grandam of Sunol. When the two-year-old filly Sunol in 1888 came out and trotted a mile in 2:18, it fairly took one’s breath away, and the first question on every tongue was, “How is she bred?” She was represented to be by Electioneer, out of Waxana by General Benton, and she out of Waxy by Lexington, and “thoroughbred.” When asked who bred her and how it was known that Waxy was by Lexington, the answer came back that the breeder was not known—that she had been taken across the plains by a man who died on the way. The search then commenced for the breeder of Waxy and the identification of her dam. As the search progressed there were some very curious things developed. When it started in the spring it was a yearling stallion colt, and when it reached California, in the fall, it was a two-year-old filly. More than this, it was shown by indubitable proofs, such as they were, that she had two dams, and then shown that she had no dam at all. With such a Kentucky muddle on hand there was an excellent opportunity for a controversy that might possibly become somewhat heated. This controversy is famous in the history of the exposures of untruthful pedigrees, and I will give a brief outline of it, with some specimens of the evidence adduced to sustain it.
Early in the spring of 1864 Mr. John P. Welch, an intelligent man, trained to the profession of civil engineer, reached the blue grass region of Kentucky for the purpose of securing and taking across the plains a band of well-bred horses to California. In this venture he was backed by Mr. John Anderson, a wealthy gentleman of the latter State. Mr. Welch was successful in perfecting his arrangements, and when on the very eve of starting he sent forward a complete inventory of all the animals he had in his band and sent this inventory to the California Spirit of the Times, in which paper it was published May 14, 1864, and is as follows:
1. Bay mare, 6 years old, by imp. Sovereign, dam by Glencoe, g. d. Ann Merry. 2. Bay filly, 3 years, by Vandal, dam Miss Singleton by Old Denmark, g. d. Bellamira by Monarch. 3. Bay filly, 2 years old, by Mambrino Chief, dam by Commodore. 4. Bay horse, 3 years old, by Mambrino Chief, dam by Gray Eagle. 5. Black colt, 2 years old, by Kt. of St. George, dam (dam of Capitola) by Margrave. 6. Bay mare, 9 years old, by imp. Glencoe, dam by Rudolph, g. d. Belle Anderson. 7. Bay filly, 2 years old, by Revenue, dam Sally Morgan by Emancipation. 8. Chestnut filly, 4 years old, by Vandal, dam by Gray Eagle, g. d. Churchill. 9. Chestnut mare by Wagner (dam of No. 11). 10. Bay mare by Sovereign. 11. Black colt, 2 years old, by Kt. of St. George, dam No. 9, by Wagner. 12. Chestnut filly, 3 years old, by Jack Gamble, dam Betty King by Boston. 13. Bay mare, 6 years old, by imp. Sovereign, dam by Mirabeau, g. d. Arabella. 14. Captain Beard, b. s., 9 years old, by imp. Yorkshire, dam by imp. Glencoe, g. d. by imp. Leviathan, g. g. d. by Stockholder. 15. Gray mare by Gray Eagle, dam Mary Morris, by Medoc. 16. Hope, ch. m. by Glencoe, dam Susette by Aratus. 17. Bay mare by Sovereign, dam by Gray Eagle. 18. Chestnut filly, 2 years old, by Bob Johnson, dam by Brawner’s Eclipse. 19. Chestnut filly, 3 years old, by Kt. of St. George, dam by Gray Eagle. 20. Bay colt, one year old, by Lexington, dam by Gray Eagle, g. d. Mary Morris. 21. Ch. c., 2 years old by Ringgold, dam Hope by Glencoe. 22 and 23. Pair 3:00 six-year-old trotting mares. 24. Black mare, trotter, 8 years old; time, 2:50. 25. Bay gelding, trotter, 5 years old; time, near 3:00. 26. Bay mare for show, but not to go.
From this inventory we must conclude that Mr. Welch was a careful and methodical man. He knew he had twenty-six animals ready to start, and after he had written off the descriptions and pedigrees of these twenty-six animals he verified his work by numbering them from one to twenty-six inclusive, and then he knew he had not omitted any one. This inventory is the basis of the whole truth in this matter, and is the only evidence in the wide world of what animals Mr. Welch started with to California. As this is the vital and only starting point to reach the truth, I trust my readers will examine it again carefully and see whether it includes any filly or mare by Lexington, of any age. When you ask any of these “more-running-blood-in-the-trotter” people who took Waxy, the phantom daughter of Lexington, to California, you will get an evasive answer, and when pressed they will at last say, John P. Welch. Now, as to John P. Welch, “he being dead yet speaketh.” From his unknown grave he tells these people they are trying to establish what is not true, and with his ghostly finger points to the inventory and demands, “Where is the Lexington filly in that list? You are trying to displace the truth with a falsehood,” and he drives this charge home to the heart of each one of them.
Here we might close this case and leave it to the enlightened judgment of all intelligent and honest people, for there is not a scintilla of evidence that any two-year-old daughter of Lexington was taken to California in 1864. Until this evidence is adduced, no attempt to overthrow the contents of John P. Welch’s inventory has a single peg to stand on. But I am not yet done with some of the peculiarities that have been developed in this case, for long ago I learned in this pedigree business,
“That for ways that are dark, And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar.”
At this point the case bifurcates, one fork leading to the Grey Eagle mare as the dam of Waxy, and the other to the Brawner’s Eclipse mare, and I think my language will not be wholly unparliamentary when I pronounce them both frauds. Mr. Levi S. Gould, a worthy business man of Boston, whom I have always esteemed as honest, was the first to dig up this whole matter in the columns of the California Spirit of the Times, and the first to give the above inventory to the public. He traveled thousands of miles and claimed to have traced Waxy to the stable of her breeder, Philip Swigert, of Frankfort, Kentucky. The full account of his laborious trip was published in Wallace’s Monthly for March, 1889, p. 17. In the inventory he found one animal got by Lexington, but this was a bay colt of 1863, and out of the Grey Eagle mare, but he wanted a chestnut filly. After studying the matter over, he concluded that this “bay colt” was a typographical error for “chestnut filly” and that this established the pedigree of Waxy. He interviewed a number of people who had known of, or had been in some way connected with, the Welch venture, and they were all able to confirm his discovery of the typographical error, and could recount to a nicety their distinct recollections of the sorrel filly by Lexington, out of the Grey Eagle mare. These people seemed to possess the most astonishing memories, and the color, breeding and age of a filly they had not seen nor heard of for a quarter of a century all came back to them with as much freshness as though the events had occurred yesterday. Then there was a peculiar element in their memories, for they could recall everything about this one filly and nothing about any of the others. At last Mr. Gould reached Mr. Brodhead, of Kentucky, where the “finishing touches” were put upon the pedigree of Waxy. Mr. Satterwhite did not reach Woodburn till after Mr. Gould had left, but that did not prevent him from making a “statement” that exactly fitted the theory of the pedigree as matured by Mr. Gould and Mr. Brodhead. He had been Mr. Philip Swigert’s foreman in 1864, and had a right to know something of the transfer of some eight or ten head of stock from Mr. Swigert to Mr. Welch in the spring of that year. Satterwhite was quite too good a witness, as he disclosed his cramming frightfully. He remembered “the light chestnut filly, by Lexington and out of the Grey Eagle mare,” with great distinctness and was sure she was foaled in 1863. In no single case was he certain except in the filly by Lexington, and in no single case was he able to give the ages of the other young things correctly. After Satterwhite made his visit to Woodburn, Mr. Brodhead wrote Mr. Gould as follows:
“Satterwhite says Dick Jackson was with Welch. I think, with what you have, the pedigree of Waxy is conclusively proved, and you can get your article ready. The sooner it is published the better. I forwarded some letters to you, and I hope they gave you additional information.”
It will be remembered that Mr. Gould started out on the assumption that, as there was but one animal in the inventory by Lexington and that was a bay colt of 1863, that “colt,” he argued, was a typographical error, and instead of “bay colt” it should read “sorrel filly.” On this very uncertain basis he worked throughout. On this basis he collected all his futile statements. On this basis, and to lend a helping hand, Satterwhite testified; and on this basis Brodhead wrote, “With what you have, the pedigree of Waxy is conclusively proved.” Now that Mr. Brodhead is satisfied and that Mr. Bruce promptly entered Waxy in his Stud Book as by Lexington and out of the Grey Eagle mare, we must drop the whimsical idea of the “typographical error” and consider whether the bay colt of 1863, by Lexington, did really become a sorrel filly of 1862 when he reached California a few months later.
1. The bay colt, No. 20, of the inventory, was the only animal in the band by Lexington. He was a foal of 1863, and was a year younger than any of the others.
2. In speaking of the losses, by death on the route, of some of the more noted animals, Mr. Anderson enumerates the noted stallion Captain Beard, and a very fine yearling colt by Lexington, called Frank. Here perished the only foal by Lexington in the band, and we may as well bury Mr. Gould’s and Mr. Brodhead’s “typographical error” with him, for the colt kicked it to death before he died.
3. When the band reached California there were several additions smuggled into it as being part of the originals from Kentucky, and among these additions was the light chestnut filly that has been since known as Waxy, given as a foal of 1862, and got by Lexington, dam unknown.
4. As Mr. Brodhead had proved conclusively, from the records at Woodburn, that Mr. Swigert’s Grey Eagle mare was barren in 1862, the “typographical error” parties found themselves placed “between the devil and the deep sea.”
This outside filly that had been smuggled into the band of Kentuckians was advertised along with them, as a foal of 1862, in the fall of 1864; she was sold as a foal of 1862; she was entered in a sweepstake for three-year-olds as a foal of 1862; she was exhibited at a horse show as a foal of 1862; she started to run the only race she ever attempted as a foal of 1862, and proving herself utterly worthless as a race mare, she was given away on the spot as a foal of 1862.
As the only representative of Lexington in the band was “the yearling bay colt Frank,” as shown by Mr. Anderson, the partner of Mr. Welch; and as the records at Woodburn had clearly and distinctly shown that Swigert’s Grey Eagle mare was barren in 1862, the bottom was out of the conspiracy and it was abandoned. There was a little fussing about the possibility that there might have been a mistake and that Waxy might have been a foal of 1863 after all, but it amounted to nothing more than the enfeebled squeak of an asthmatic mouse and then all was quiet.
Before passing to the other branch of the investigation, this seems to be the proper place to speak of the incidents of the sale and its sequences at the Fair Grounds at San Jose, January 3, 1865. There were some twelve or fifteen head, that had been previously advertised, offered at public sale, and a number of those were sold, all indeed in which this inquiry has any interest. When the stock arrived at San Jose, there was a good deal of confusion, and it is just possible that some of them were not correctly placed. The only discrepancy which I have found between Mr. Welch’s inventory and the facts is in the color of the filly No. 18, that appears in the inventory as a chestnut, but is advertised and sold as a bay. This mistake in color is not infrequent in the spring of the year before the old coat is shed, and I think it may be reasonably accounted for on this ground. James L. Eoff, well known from ocean to ocean as the king of all “horse sharps,” seems to have taken a good deal of interest in assorting the animals and in picking up scraps of information from the boys who had come with them. At the same time he was an excellent judge of racing stock, and as silent as the grave to the victims whom he sought to mislead and then beat. In this way he soon knew more about the breeding of the animals than those in charge of them. Mr. William Woodward seems to have been his friend (?) with plenty of money, but a perfect “tenderfoot” in the mysteries of the race horse. No doubt he pointed out to Mr. Woodward the so-called Lexington filly and advised him to buy her, assuring him that he wanted her himself, but if he wanted to take a little fly in racing he would not bid against him. The sale came off, and Eoff ran up the Revenue filly, out of Sally Morgan, to three hundred and twenty-five dollars and got her, it is said, for Theodore Winters. When they came to the filly by Bob Johnson, out of the mare by Brawner’s Eclipse, Eoff bought her at two hundred and fifty dollars for himself, and named her Lilly Hitchcock. The next animal sold was the filly by Lexington, dam unknown, and she was bought by William Woodward at two hundred and fifty dollars, and he named her Waxy. The sale was slimly attended and much of the stock was bid in for the owner, Mr. John Anderson. That night the wine flowed very freely, as it was the initiation of the “tenderfoot,” Mr. Woodward, into the ranks of running-horse men. After they all “got hot” (except Eoff), a sweepstakes was opened for the three fillies, Ada C. (the Revenue filly), Lilly Hitchcock and Waxy, at two hundred and fifty dollars each, and Eoff was careful to see that it was made “play or pay.” The race was a dash of a mile and a quarter, and it took place nearly twelve months after the match was made. Eoff won easily with Lilly Hitchcock, and Waxy was so badly beaten that Woodward gave her away on the spot and “swore off” ever owning another running horse. Thus Eoff’s cunning carried his plot through, without a break at any point. From the hour he bought this filly he stoutly maintained she was by Lexington and out of the Brawner’s Eclipse mare. She ran all her races under this pedigree and never was challenged, and if ever there was a mare in California bred in this way, this is likely to be the mare. We can understand just how he could have discovered where Waxy came from, and that she never saw Kentucky, and on this knowledge he based the game he played on poor Woodward.
After the failure to establish the claim that Waxy came out of Philip Swigert’s Grey Eagle mare and publicly confessing that the evidence upon which Mr. Gould and Mr. Brodhead based their conclusions was fallacious and the conclusions themselves incorrect, the advocates of “more running blood in the trotter” pulled themselves together for another bout. What purported to be an old document was dug up somewhere—indeed I am told there were two of them dug up, one in Kentucky and the other somewhere on the Pacific coast—purporting to be duplicates of an agreement entered into, in March, 1864, between John P. Welch, of California and Philip Swigert, of Kentucky, by which Welch agreed to take certain blood horses to California and sell or breed them on the shares, etc. This document possessed all the paraphernalia of authenticity, with government stamp, witnesses to the signatures of the contracting parties, etc. This document (I don’t know which “duplicate”) was shown to me in April, 1891, and at the first glance, and without reading a word except the date, it astounded me. There was a paper purporting to be twenty-seven years old, and it looked as bright and fresh as though it had been written within twenty-seven hours. There was no fading of the luster of the ink and there was no ageing in the color of the paper. Having devoted a great deal of time to the examination of writings, varying in age from one day to a hundred years and more, and this experience extending through many years, I ought to be a fairly competent judge of the effects of age on ink and paper. Here was a paper purporting to be over a quarter of a century old with all the newness of yesterday, and when Mr. J. C. Simpson showed it to me I was impressed with the belief, on this one point of evidence alone, that it was spurious, and that Mr. Simpson had been made a victim by some rascally scrivener. With so much for the appearance of the paper, on its face, we will now examine the contents and see whether any evidence can there be found that will throw further light on the question of its authenticity. Unfortunately I have not what purports to be the original of this document before me, and I must therefore depend upon my memory and upon what Judge Halsey, as attorney for Mr. Brodhead, has printed as the contents. In giving the list of animals I will follow the order of the “document” and place before each one, for convenience of reference, the number attached to that animal in Mr. Welch’s original inventory.
15. One gray mare, by Grey Eagle, out of Mary Morris. 16. One sorrel mare, Hope, by Glencoe. 17. Sovereign filly, out of Grey Eagle mare, four years old. 8. Vandal filly, out of bay Grey Eagle mare, four years old. 18. One two-year-old filly, by Bob Johnson, out of bay Grey Eagle mare. 19. One two-year-old filly by Lexington. 20. One yearling colt, by Lexington, out of Grey Eagle mare. 21. One two-year-old filly, by Ringgold, out of Hope.
In looking over this list there are several points suggested for remark and they all have a bearing, more or less direct, on the question at issue. The list seems to have been prepared, if prepared by Mr. Swigert, very hurriedly and without sufficient regard to completeness or accuracy. He started off, possibly to make a careful list, as he gave the color of the two-year-old mares at the head and then dropped all purpose of completeness and gave no colors nor descriptions to those that followed. He gives No. 21 as a filly when it was a colt, and so appears in the inventory, was sold as a colt with pedigree at San Jose, January, 1865, and again, with the same pedigree, at The Willows, February, 1866. Under ordinary conditions the statement of the breeder should be conclusive against all others, but in this case the evident hurry and absence of descriptions have destroyed the value of the whole list, in great degree, as evidence that could be accepted with safety. We must, therefore, look for something in the way of evidence more deliberative and descriptive in its preparation, and this we find in the joint work of Mr. Swigert and Mr. Welch, as embodied in the inventory. When the descriptions of the animals were taken, both men were equally interested in accuracy and completeness, both were present, and probably the animals were before them. Hence my infinitely greater confidence in the deliberative work of the two, as found in the inventory.
The one point about which all this hubbub has been raised is the so-called “Lexington filly,” that appears as the sixth in the above list. She has no number attached to her name, and this means that she was not in the inventory, and it means more than this; for it is, in a manner, the dying testimony of an honest man that he took no Lexington filly to California, and fortunately this testimony has been preserved. The methods introduced to prove that Welch did take her are the methods of the imbecile. Let us admit, for the moment, that Swigert had a Lexington filly and that she was in a contract with Welch to be taken to California; does that prove that Welch took her, when he says he did not? There are hundreds and hundreds of people every year who buy steamship tickets to go to Europe who fail to go. The records of Mr. Swigert’s ticket office show that the ticket was bought, but they fail to show that the purchaser went aboard the ship. You must go to Purser Welch and get a list of passengers actually on board in order to determine who did and who did not go. Accidents, sickness and death are all factors in the movements, of horses just as they are in the movements of human beings. It is the observation of a long lifetime that horsemen are never so near their best as fools as when they attempt to establish a fraudulent pedigree by evidence that utterly fails to cover the case. They claim to have found a ticket that would carry Waxy to California, and whether genuine or counterfeit they rely wholly on this ticket as evidence that she went. The master of the vessel affirms she was not aboard his vessel, and in support of this he shows a complete list and description of the passengers numbered from one to twenty-six inclusive. This is the whole thing in a nutshell. The proof is clear and conclusive that Mr. Welch did not take any daughter of Lexington to California. Now, will the prominent and active supporters of Waxy’s pedigree, as a daughter of Lexington, come forward and in a manly way answer this question of five words? “Who took Waxy to California?” If Welch, prove it. If anybody else, prove it. We may be able to catch a few gulls with chaff, the first attempt, but we can’t repeat it. If the question can be answered, it is well, and if not, honest people will form their own conclusions that it is not sustained and is no more worthy of belief than the “Grey Eagle mare” form of the same pedigree, which is now universally conceded to be a fiction.
AMERICAN ECLIPSE.—It is not my purpose to frighten people by overthrowing landmarks that have stood for years, but it is my purpose to tell the truth and expose falsehood in pedigrees wherever I meet it. As a satisfaction and guide to breeders in the future it is important to know just how the early stock were bred, although they may have belonged to past generations. A breeder never can know too much of the lines in which he is operating. This great horse was a good chestnut, with a star and left hind foot white. He was stout, with heavy limbs, and somewhat coarse, and not of the best quality, but possibly better than the average of the Durocs. He was a fraction of an inch below fifteen two. He was foaled 1814, got by Duroc, son of imported Diomed; dam Miller’s Damsel, by imported Messenger; grandam a mare by Pot8os, imported by Mr. Constable along with the horse Baronet, in 1795. This is just as far as we can go with any certainty, and this leaves the greatest race horse of his day far short of being thoroughbred. When Mr. Constable bought the Pot8os mare in England he got no certificate of pedigree, but he was told there she was out of a mare by Gimcrack. Mr. Cadwallader R. Colden was the best-informed man of his day on the history, blood, and performances of the blood-horse, was a very intimate and warm friend of Mr. Constable, and he did everything that could be done to straighten out and extend this pedigree, but he utterly failed. He thought it probable that the mare was thoroughbred, but he believed the Gimcrack cross was a fiction. Some eighteen or twenty years ago, when in London, Mr. Tattersall suggested to me that if Lord Grosvenor bred a filly by Pot8os in 1792 that was thoroughbred, there could hardly be a doubt that she was entered in some of the stakes for three-year-olds. Then and there we searched the old records, but nothing could be found to support the supposed pedigree. It was not till 1832 that any special effort was made to establish the pedigree through the press, and in January of that year the famous Patrick Nesbit Edgar, of North Carolina, wrote as follows to Mr. Skinner, editor of the American Turf Register:
“The authority I had for sending the remote pedigree of American Eclipse for publication was that it was furnished me lately by a gentleman in England, who put himself to uncommon pains to procure it. He resides near Bath, in that country. All the authority requisite I have at this time in my possession. The Pot8os mare was got by Pot8os; her dam, foaled in 1778, by Gimcrack, out of Snap-Dragon, sister to Angelica by Snap. (See English Stud Book.)”
Mr. Edgar wrote more on the same subject, after he was pressed to it by Mr. Colden, but he failed to produce any evidence whatever that he was telling the truth. According to his representations his correspondence on the subject had been very extensive, and he complained that he had paid out forty shillings in postage.
It will be observed how cleverly Mr. Edgar conceals the sources of his information while he pretends to give them, and that has been the favorite “dodge” of all rascally “pedigree makers” from that day till the present. Mr. Constable always insisted that the mare was bred by Lord Grosvenor, and that she was by Pot8os, but he did not insist that she was out of a mare by Gimcrack. As Lord Grosvenor was one of the most prominent of all breeders of race horses in his day, and as he evidently kept the records of his stud with more care than most of his contemporaries, we might reasonably expect to find some trace of this mare if she was thoroughbred. After a careful and diligent search of all the records of that period, it is found that Lord Grosvenor never bred a Gimcrack filly to Pot8os. This disposes of Mr. Edgar’s humbug story, and when we state the pedigree of American Eclipse we can simply say he was got by Duroc; dam Miller’s Damsel by Messenger, and grandam the imported Pot8os mare, and there we must stop.
For years past I have observed that the less a man knows about horse 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.
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.
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.
As we have now considered a great triumph, with the causes that led up to it and the lesson it has taught, it seems to be in order to give an example of a great failure and the causes which have produced it. For more than forty years Woodburn Farm, in Kentucky, has been breeding trotters, and up to the close of 1896 just four with records of 2:15 or better have hailed from that great establishment. During all these years, and until Palo Alto Farm was established, Woodburn was the largest establishment in this country. With thousands of broad acres of the most productive soil, with the possession and control of money without limit, and with the experiences of forty years in which to select and breed only to the best, it is the natural and reasonable expectation of everybody interested in the question of breeding the trotter to look to Woodburn as leading all other establishments in the whole world in the production of first-class trotters. And what has Woodburn done? With her experiences of forty years, with all her broad acres and boundless wealth, up to the close of 1896 she has produced just four trotters with records of 2:15 or better. Instead of leading all others, she is at the wrong end of the procession, and if we consider the proportional advantages involved, we find that “all others,” little and big, are leading her. By referring to the above list of breeders that have produced three or more with records of 2:15 or better, we find that Henry N. Smith has produced thirteen, that William Corbett, from his little stud in California, has produced nine, and that the late William H. Wilson, of Cynthiana, Kentucky, from his little band of mares, and without either broad acres or money, has produced eight within the past twelve or fifteen years, and all except one by the same horse. This places Mr. Wilson first among all Kentucky breeders. In the short period of its existence Glenview Farm produced six, and the quite unpretentious farmer, Mr. Timothy Anglin, produced five; W. C. France and Colonel R. G. Stoner produced four each—the same number as Woodburn—but they did not require forty years to accomplish it. Thus the breeding world, with “the little fellows” on top, has gone away ahead and left Woodburn to mumble over her “tin cups,” and exult in the many triumphs she has won against the watch in 2:30. The policy of Woodburn for years past seems to have been to hold the lead of Kentucky breeders in the production of 2:30 trotters, and to this end the youngsters are put in training in the early spring and kept at it till the frosts come, when such of them as are sure to win are brought out and started against the watch, for a “tin cup,” and these are the victories that Woodburn wins. Nobody has ever heard of Woodburn entering a youngster in a stake where he would have to win on his merits. That would be bringing him down to an equality with the colts of such people as William H. Wilson, Colonel R. G. Stoner, Farmer Timothy Anglin, and all the other “little fellows.” Woodburn has made a great deal of money out of these humbug tin-cup records, and as registration and the standard are now absolutely under the control of her manager, the 2:30-tin-cup still remains the evidence of a fast trotter, worthy of standard rank. True, everybody nowadays laughs at the idea that 2:30, with the “tin cup,” is any evidence of even reputable speed, but as they have given a certain kind of pre-eminence and made money in the past, the twins will not be separated, but will hold their places just as long as the standard is under the present control.
From this brief examination of the symptoms I think a safe diagnosis can be made. The trouble seems to be twofold, or it may be said there are two troubles, either one of which is dangerous, but the two together may prove fatal in the end. It is a well-known fact in veterinary science that there are certain diseases among horses that may be communicated to the men who have them in charge. There is one disease, vulgarly called “big-head,” that comes creeping upon its victim before he is aware of its existence or approach, and against the insidious steps of this destroyer the manager at Woodburn should be affectionately warned. Sham records of 2:30 for standard rank are no longer welcomed with enthusiasm in this country. The other trouble is not so much with the manager as with the material which he manages, which seems to be affected with what may be called “dry-rot.” This view of the non-productive character of the Woodburn breeding stock, when measured by first-class performers, seems to be borne out by the fact that the names of those gentlemen who have depended most largely on Woodburn blood do not appear on the foregoing list as the producers of first-class trotters. For about forty years the fame of Woodburn as the greatest of all our breeding establishments has been as wide as the boundaries of the nation. But notwithstanding the weight and influence which great wealth and an unblemished name may have secured, the records up to the close of the year 1896 have deposed her from the first rank as a breeder of trotting horses, and sent her away to the rear, where she now occupies her true place in the eighth rank. It is well known to everybody that, since the days of the first Mr. Alexander, Woodburn has never entered a colt in a stake nor started one against other people’s colts, prize or no prize. This air of assumed superiority is sought to be explained on high moral grounds against the evils of horse-racing. This is like the man who never tasted whisky for conscience’ sake, in view of the great evil it was doing in the world, and yet he was the chief owner in a large distillery. At the great local meetings in Kentucky practically all the breeding establishments of that region, except Woodburn, are represented in the stakes, and while they are being contested Woodburn will come in with a string of youngsters, between the heats, and win sham records in 2:30 for “tin cups.” Depending on this kind of test and this kind of development, it is not remarkable that all the small breeders of the State have left Woodburn in the rear. This shining example of failure teaches unmistakably the necessity of honest and full development of breeding stock in order to produce high-class trotters.