But the people have had much to do with the excellence of Kentucky horses. They seem to have been by nature interested in the breed of horses from the beginning of their settlement there. One of the first records of the Colonial era is that of a Kentuckian who was killed by an Indian while training a race-horse on a frontier race-course. And among the seven first statutes enacted by the Colony when in preparation to become a state of the Union, was one to regulate the range and improve the breed of horses. They were horse lovers in Kentucky in the beginning as they are to-day. And to-day there is no crime that is looked upon with more contempt than to misrepresent the breeding of a horse. In Kentucky a gentleman may kill another gentleman if his cause be just, and suffer no reproach save that of himself; but if he palter with the pedigree of a horse he trifles with his caste, and is ranked with the sneak thieves and the pickpockets who take their victims unaware, and achieve at once a petty and cowardly advantage. This love of the horse and knowledge of him has gone on from generation to generation until it has become a part, and no inconsiderable part of the heritage of every Kentuckian who considers himself well born. Some twenty years ago a Kentucky horse-breeder was in Boston, visiting a gentleman with whom he had business. The Bostonian, with the characteristic hospitality of those Dr. Holmes catalogued as of the “Brahmin caste,” showed the Kentuckian about. He pointed out to him the equestrian statue of Washington at the head of Commonwealth Avenue. “There is the Washington statue,” remarked the Bostonian. “And what was the breeding of the horse?” the Kentuckian inquired. The horse to him was almost everything. And, later in the day, when dinner was over at the hospitable Bostonian’s home, and the ladies and children were retiring, the Kentuckian leaned over to his host and said, with enthusiasm: “By Gad, Colonel, you have outbred yourself.” That was a heartfelt tribute expressed in the natural way in which a Kentuckian should speak. No wonder that they have fine horses when they give so much thought to this subject of breeding. [Illustration: A GROUP OF DENMARK MARES AT PASTURE IN KENTUCKY] But for all this Kentucky has produced only one distinctive reproducing type. Her trotters—if type they be—belong as much elsewhere as to Kentucky; her runners are purely English. Her Denmarks, however, belong to Kentucky. They have been bred there for more than sixty years, and as a distinctive American type, they are second only in this country to the Morgans of Vermont. It is a singular fact and not unworthy of note that only two states have produced distinct American reproducing types, Vermont and Kentucky, and those were the first two states admitted to the Union after the original thirteen got ready to embrace other sisters.