Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1893-01-20

Where the pacing element in the
French Canadian pony came from must
always remain an unsolved mystery, but
1t can hardly be doubted that the beauty
of action that prompts the head, heart
and hand of the turf sculptor more than
5000 years ago has sfted down through
the horse family all these years, crop
ping out like the fires of Vesuvius, per-
haps for a time quiescent but exhaust
less, eternal.
One thing we know, it was not here,
and with the advent Of the Frenchnan
it came. We know further that at one
time Montreal was daily mart where
there was a continuous horse fair, the
buyers being Americans from every
large eastern city in the Union; thus this
French stock sifted all through the East
ern and Southern States, changing, alter
ing and controlling gait, formation and
action.
BY mixture the pacing pony has been
developed into an animal of beautiful
form; the carriage of a king, and mag
nificent proportions, and his speed is to-
day :04. Between him and the trotter
holors are easy and each will march
close to the two-minute mark in 1893 or
"a. He has lived thirty centuries in
spite of breeding. and he will live till
the grand old roundup of Gabriel, and
will have more glorious mount than
ever before among the myriSds of heav-
emily hosts that like the many fanciers
enamoured with that gait. We may
breed to breed him out of our tro;ting
families, but the blood is there and will
not down; on the contrary it will bob up
serenely to dazzle our senses with it's
beautyand make our brains giddy with its
speed the transformation of gait is too
easy to prevent, it is simply change of
action of a set of muscles where a little eX-
ira weight behind, either in hoof or iron,
works the transformation, therefore it
NAV be natural or it may be accidental of
hoof formation. And further the history
of the trotter is dotted with pacing land
marks of the trotting sire has been a I'M
form producer of speed and extreme
speed at that. Belmont and Almont,
both by the same sire, the one with
MambrinO out-cross, the other with
Pilot, Jr., out-crOss, are both great :;
great in speed, great in heats won, great
in total force, But the son of Mambrino
and Abdallah, is greatest in the happy
nick of that blood with that great Pilot,
Jr., mare Miss Russell. Harold's memory
will be alone kept green in his greatest
son, Lord Russell and again the plum of
excellence drops quietly into the lap of
the pacing-bred trotler, Pilot, Jr. Man
ager, Nutwood's greatest son, that has
held the two, the three and the four-year-
old stallion pacing record, and their as
suranCe that no amount of out-crossing
will suppress pacing action; that in fact
the PAGER of to-day may be the trotter of
tomorrow without violence or risk. We
know the greatest living or dead produc-
er of , 80 horses. Electioneer, has only
one PAGER to his credit; but we know
this apparent anomaly came not from the
instinct or brain of the great dead, but
FROM the mental pedigree of the great
living.
Red Wilkes fastest son is PAGER and
may carry the pacing pennant close to
the two-minute line, while his family
jewels are largely made up of the pacing
element. The fastest living PAGER by
the records is by son of Hambletonian
and so is the fastest living trotter.
and while the qceen who holds the trot-
ting records has in her veins the blood
of kings and queens of the turf, the king
of PAGERS has an untraced dam and his
sire has an untraced dam; but side by
side with him Is that earnest truth, that
natures magic wand touched and
brought into existence nameless star of
the first magnitude, through the medium
of hidden elements we may not pene-
trate. And again we bow to the unseen
force we cannot or never will span or
measure. Breeders no longer delve into
and seek for uncertainties everything
we did in the light of past experience
was an unknown quantity; logarlthm
in nature; we now seek to approach the
lines of certainty in breeding, and this
we can only do by selection. There is
no doubt but that the advocate of the pa
Ger can with the aid of the pacing enthu-
siasts build up great pacing family
with pacing instincts as distinct as the
instincts of a trotting-bred; but what
will those men gain after they have done
this? They can carry 1t to the climax
of breeding where the blood of the trot-
ter will not mingle kindly with it, aye,
they can produce with thoroughbred |
mares a generation of thoroughbred pac- |
ers; an impossibility in our trotting bred |
and when all this is done /
dare say TO such advocates for the
In Of fIa loto,oI III