“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.