“So many pacing horses have got fast trotters, so many pacing mares have produced fast trotters, and so many pacers have themselves become fast trotters, and little or nothing known of their breeding, that I confess to a degree of embarrassment, from which no philosophy relieves me. If the facts were limited to a few individual cases we could ignore the phenomena altogether, but, while they are by no means universal, they are too common and apparent to be thus easily disposed of. I am not aware that any writer has ever brought this question to the attention of the public; much less, attempted its discussion and explanation. Indeed, it is possible that the observations of others may not sustain me in the prominence given these phenomena, but all will concede there are some cases coming under this head that are unexplained, and perhaps unexplainable. It is probable trotters from this pacing origin, and that appear to trot, only because their progenitors paced, will not prove reliable producers of trotters. Such an animal being in a great degree phenomenal, should not be too highly prized in the stud, till he has proved himself a trotting sire as well as a trotter.” This very comprehensive little paragraph, put modestly and tentatively rather than positively, contained a germ of thought that is to-day exerting a very wide influence. So far as my knowledge goes, this was the first time in which the public attention had ever been called to the intimate relations between speed at the pace and speed at the trot. Some laughed at it as not practical, others sneered at it as a theoretical abstraction, a few gave it some thought, while the writers who never think left it severely alone. It required the cumulative experiences of nearly ten years before horsemen generally began to think about it, and then ten more before the germ had matured itself in the minds of all intelligent men who were able to divest themselves of their earlier prejudices. The great primary truth now stands out in high relief that the pace and the trot are simply two forms of one and the same gait, that lies midway between the walk and the gallop. At last the truth, dimly foreshadowed in the paragraph above, is received and accepted, in some form or other, almost if not quite universally. This fact and its acceptance are now shown in all the recorded experiences of racing, and especially in the origin and habits of action of many of the heads of trotting and pacing families, to which the reader is referred.