Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1906-05-18
HORSE DEPARTMENT.
What Others Think.


of unattractive trotting bred horses in
Western auction rings this year at prices
but little, if any, higher than might have
been obtained in the "bull ring at the
Union Stock Yards for so many common
place animals of unknown breeding serve
to direct the attention of horsemen anew
to very interesting and wholly graft
flying change that is gradually working
for good in the theories, aspirations and
practices of the more intelligent breeders
of harness horses.
The hoar of age has gathered around
the boast of his breeders that the Amer
lean trotters especial claim to popular
ity and value lies in the fact that he is
versatile horse of wide range of utility,
as contrasted with the thoroughbred,
which partisans of the trotter describe as
"a racing machine or nothing" The
modicum of truth in this assertion is
generally conceded. but it may, too, be
pertinently asked, as it is being asked
with increasing frequency by more and
trotting horses as class have bred true
to precept which the assertion implies
or whether they have not in their breed
ing operations drifted perilously near to
the point where the trotter also will be
"a racing machine or nothing"
That this is so the records of the auc-
ten ring seem to indicate very strongly,
for while standardized trotters, without
beauty of form, are selling in droves at
less than 5000 apiece in the special speed
sales held at Chicago, Lexington, Indian
apolis, Cambridge City, Wabash ard
various Western points, dealers in New
York and other cities are paying extrava-
giant prices for handsome harness horses
of the same breed and are travelling to
every nook and corner of the continent
to find them.
To those who believe the highest
sphere of the trotting horse is away
from the race track and that speed is not
the chief end, but merely an important
incident in the development and improve
ment of the American driving horse, it
is pleasing to know through the voice of
the markets that beauty is thus at so
high a premium and ugliness at so great
discount
Horsemen of intelligence are now gen.
orally agreed that the craze for speed.
which set in many years ago and reached
climax just before the break of 1892,
had seriously retarding effect on the
development of high type Of native
harness horse. Speed and blood preg-
nant in speed, but potent in no other
virtue, sold for absurdly high prices and
commanded recklessly general use in the
stud, coupled with no matter what de-
fects of form. The natural result was
the propagation of a horde of trotters of
alarmingly low average excellence and
the almost total extinction of such at
tractively andsome tribes as the old
time Morgans.
Though decade of low prices for
rubbish has cleared away vast amount
of it, much still remains, and the purg-
ing process is still going on, as evidenced
by the records of the Western auction
sales But the lesson has been forced
home to all shrewd breeders, and a
marked change in the direction of more
discrimination, more exacting methods
in breeding. is now widely manifesting
itself. Restricted breeding operations
since the break in 1892 have helped to
bring the trotting interest back to sub
4 stantial basis, and the increasing reali-
cation of the fact that beauty and quality
will be hencefoIth essential TO insure
good prices is already working wonders
in the elevation Of the standard of breed
ing.
While the majority of trotting horse
men are breeding within the breed, many
others who aim at the heavy harness or
carriage type are successfully crossing
the trotter with the English hackney and
the French coacher. These are the three
great carriage horse types, and though
each is capable within itself of producing
splendid harness horses, it is not unlike
ly that the perfected American carriage
horse of the future will represent COM
bination of the blood of two, and perhaps
all three, of these families.
The following letter upon the I'd dam
of Lou Dillon, the fastest trotter, is from