Lou Dillon, chestnut mare 1903 1.58½ [Illustration: LOU DILLON (STANDARD-BRED TROTTER) Owned by J. G. K. Billings. First horse to trot a mile in less than two minutes ] This table shows that three minutes was reduced in forty-one years to two minutes and twenty seconds—that is in that time forty seconds were lopped off the record. It took forty-four years to take off the next twenty seconds. In the meantime the bicycle, ball-bearing sulky had been invented, and the last half of this twenty seconds were cut off when this weightless and frictionless vehicle was used. The Standard Bred Trotter had also been created. My idea is that the Dutchman, Henry Clay, and Lady Suffolk could either of them gone a mile in from ten to fifteen seconds faster than they did under modern conditions of training, driving, shoeing and harnessing and hitched to the modern vehicle. These experiments have all been very interesting, but I believe the same results might have been achieved at a very much less cost and loss—indeed, with a profit. Exceeding high prices for trotting-horses have been very injurious to the horse-breeding industry. Whenever a trotting-horse brings twenty, forty or a hundred thousand dollars it sets the breeders, even the small ones wild with a desire to breed a colt that will bring such a price. Mr. Bonner began this with his purchase of Dexter, and followed it up by buying many others at very high figures, including Maud S. and Sunol. He doubtless found this an excellent advertisement for himself and his paper, but it was a bad thing for the horses of the country. The purchase of Axtell at $105,000 and Arion at $125,000 was even more demoralizing. No trotting-horse was ever worth that much and none probably ever will be. However, it is an excellent thing for very rich men to breed horses. They can afford to make experiments, and if their experiments are successful the men of moderate means can imitate them and succeed also. But this trotting horse breeding business is a rich man’s divertisement just as yachting is. The men who breed for profit should confine themselves to types which are reproducing, to types which come true more frequently than they prove false. I firmly believe that if these trotters are ever made a consistently reproducing type, it will be by constant infusions of a mixture of trotting blood—Morgan or Clay—with that of the Thoroughbred. The first cross will probably not produce it, but if the mares of such unions be bred back to stallions of the blood mentioned, the result ought to be more satisfactory in the way of making a type, even though the experiments may not result in phenomenal speed; but there is no reason why there should not be a satisfactory percentage of phenomenal speed as well. CHAPTER SEVEN THE CLAY AND CLAY-ARABIAN