Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1883-11-08
THE FASTEST POSSIBLE TROT-
TER.
How Fast Horses will Ultimately
TrOt, and when the Maximum will
be Reached.
New York Sun.

New York SUM-
How fast will the fastest possible trOtter
go? What is the highest speed that can
ever be attained by the American trOtting
horse for a distance of one mile?
/ These are questions which two we'll
known scientific men, Prof. William ii.
Brewer, of Connecticut, and Mr.. Francis f.
Nipher, of Missouri. have lately endeav-
ored to answer in three papers contributed
to the american Journal of Science. The
first of these articles, by Prof. Brewer, ap-
peared in April. The contributions of MIR.
Nipher are published in the numbers Of
July and August.
Prof. Brewer publishes table showing
the number of trotting horses which have
attained or surpassed various rates of speed
ranging from 2:3O to 2:11 for a series OF
years extending from 1843 to 1882. From
this table it appears that in 1858 there was
only one horse that had trotted a mile in
2:3O or better; in 1853 the number had in
creased to IA; in 1868 to SO in 1873 to
376; in 1882 to 1888 The table also
shows that up to 1852, 495 horses had
trotted a mile in 2:25 or better; 275 in
2:23 or better; 1856 in 2:21 or better; 60 in
2:19 or better; 18 in PIT or better, and 8
IL
ticians," said Prof Brewer in. reference to
this table, "to plot the curves which i'm
mediately suggest themselves to deter
mine how fast horses will ultimately trot,
and when this maximum will be reached"
Mr.. Nipher has undertaken the task first
suggested. His first conclusion, as stated
in the July number of the american Jour-
nal of Science, was that the maximum
speed to which the American trotting
horse will constantly approximate, but
never reach, is one mile in 80 seconds, OF
1:32. He also concludes that the time Of
the trotting horse will be reduced to with
in one second of this figure in 800 years
after the year 1860, that is to say, in the
year of our Lord 1920. Mr.. Nipher does
not claim absolute precision for his rules
and says that the maximum speed may
possibly be as great as 100 seconds. In the
course of ten years, however, he thinks the
limit can be fixed with accuracy, and he is
quite sure that eventually the maximum
speed of trotting and running and running
horses will differ only be few seconds.
In his last article Mr.. Niphe1 states that
he has made new calculation, by mathe-
matical instead of graphical methods, and
has thus obtained 81 seconds instead of 93
seconds as the most probable figure for the
minimum time of trotting mile. The
probable error of this value, he says, is not
over four seconds, and it is not likely that
the running horse will cut his record down
by five seconds, so that it is probable the
trotter will finally surpass the running
horse.
If this prediction is verified, the inhabi-
tants of the United States in the twenty
third century will have horses that can get
over the ground by means of an artificial
gait faster than by natural gait. We be-
lieve that all writers agree that running is
natural to horses, while fast trottong is
not. Mr.. Nipher states, however. what is
known fact, that some herds of wild horses
on the plains were natural pacers so fast
and steady that nearly all preserved their
pacing gait even when pursued by fast
running horses. He speaks of one large
white Texan PAGER that never could be
caught