Barker, of Clinton, Oneida County, New York, in January, 1855, who now owns her. Flora was her first colt. Her second a horse colt, was foaled in the spring of 1855, and was bought by J. W. Taylor, of East Bloomfield, for R. A. Alexander, of Woodford County, for $500. This colt was sired by H. L. Barker’s Edwin Forrest (a Kentucky colt), now owned by S. Downing, Lexington, Kentucky.” So we can take our choice of pedigrees. If Flora Temple had been born a few years later the Hambletonian advocates would surely have claimed her. It has always been a wonder to me that they did not, after all, assert that she was of collateral blood. When her new owner brought this most remarkable mare to New York, he had not the most remote idea that he held one of the wonders of the world. He believed that she was a pretty good pony, and could strike a good clip on the road. She was only 14.2 hands high and had a mere stump of a tail. Besides, she was nervous, and before she “found herself” had a rather choppy action. When she had learned the trick, however, her action was smooth and clock-like, and she glided along with almost unapproachable grace. Moreover, when she broke she lost scarcely nothing, as she did not have to be pulled back almost to a standstill, but caught her trotting stride from what was very like a run. There are other books in which the record of Flora Temple can be found in all of its proud and brilliant details. She beat everything of her day, beginning with the Waite Pony on the Bloomingdale road in 1850, until Ethan Allen, Princess, George M. Patchen and all the good ones had to take her dust. She was not used under the saddle, but always to sulky or wagon. Hiram Woodruff, her first real trainer, says she was a great weight puller and was not in the least bothered by a 350 pound wagon, but went along with it as merrily as though she were in a racing sulky. Her first defeat was in 1853 by Black Douglas, a son of Henry Clay; but a few months later she had her revenge and beat the Clay stallion with apparent ease. In 1856 she took the trotting record away from Highland Maid by covering a mile in 2.24½. The record remained with her for eleven years; she reduced it in 1859 to 2.19¾, and so she was the first to trot better than 2.20, as Lady Suffolk was the first to go below 2.30. In 1859 the little bay stump-tail mare was at the very zenith of her fame, though Hiram Woodruff was of opinion that the next year she might have surpassed this. The next year the Civil War broke out and she, not being in good form, was retired to the breeding farm of Aristides Welch, near Philadelphia.