Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1889-02-22
HEREDITARY ROAD QUALITIES.

The world is FULL OF SO-called trOtulnS
stock. 1t is simply amazing to look over
the columns of the papers and periodi-
Gals devoted to horses alone, and see how
exclusively, at this time of year, their
columns are devoted to advertising sales
of mobs of young horses with fashiona-
BILE pedigrees. What becomes of them
all is a dark and awful mystery. The
fact appears to be that the produce of
trotting horse breeders establishments
are sold year by year, at coordination
sales, "breeders' sales, and by thou
sand schemes, as well as by the ordinary
private sales that are advertised through
papers and catalogues, and are never
heard of more. If they developed into
trotters we should know it; we never fail
to hear of the one in a thousand that does
show speed and quality enough to start
in a race. But where are the nine hun
dred and ninety and nine?
1t is beginning to be evident that the
trotter that does not trOt is only less
worthless than that most useless of four
leGSeu DTulcs. tllt IullIlcI liltl uotS Hol
run The claim that these animals with
long pedigrees, if they do not trot, will
at least make first-class roadsters, which
has been so long and persistently urged,
is now so far refuted by facts as to be
practically abandoned among the we'll
informed. 1t is becoming evident to all
that, although trotters will now and then
crop out in the breeding of first-class
roadsters, the breeding of fashionably
bred trotters will not produce a race of
road horses of any merit.
This brings us to the question, Is it
all pedigree and breeding, or does the
life experience of the immediate ances-
tors have an influence, and. if so, how
great? And if one would breed to "A de-
veloped trotting sire on the one side, and
from performing dam on the other, to
produce a trotter, why should not the
same rule apply in the production of
roadsters? And if it is granted that it is
on the whole more profitable for the av-
erage breeder to produce roadsters with
reasonable certainty than to take the I'M
certain chance of breeding trotter, then
why should not a developed roadster be
sought for sire, as we'll as for dam?
The road instinct, the attribute that
makes a horse draw comparatively
heavy load at a cheerful gait for several
hours at IA time without tagging, is not
only the most useful of qualities, but it
is undoubtedly one that is as strongly as
any other affected by heredty. The
wild horse of the plains is no sooner
tanned than he becomes practical and
enduring saddle animal; but it is a sorry
day when you try to make him draw
carriage on the road. He is not only I'M
willing, he is positively unable to do this
kind of work. He cannot draw much,
and he cannot draw a little either fast or
far without firing out. The cause is not
far to seek. His free life on the plains
for hundred generations, while it has
developed the muscles that carry speed
at free gallop, made him alert and keen
eyed, and Injured him to long fasts and
all sorts of weather, has left entirely
undeveloped those elements of nerve and
muscle that are called into exercise in
the ordinary road work to which his
kind is put in civilized life. And it will
not be until after many generations have
been given constant and developing road
work, as well sires as dams, that the Off
spring of the hardy broncho will be able
to rival before the carriage his present
reputation under the saddle.
On the other hand, take the best fami-
ly of roadsters in the world, the Nor
gans, and it is probable that their
distinction springs as much from the
constant and continually renewed expe-
rience on the road, by both sres and
dams, as from any other cause. The diff