The Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and Development

by John Hankins Wallace

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.