deemed them unsustained and probably spurious. In confirmation of the facts and circumstances already adduced, going to show that Messenger was not thoroughbred, we are now ready to consider one of the strongest arguments that can be advanced in support of that conclusion. This argument is founded on the laws of nature and is not dependent upon the mere writing down of uncertain traditions. Messenger possessed and transmitted qualities that no thoroughbred horse has ever transmitted, from the period when the breed of race horses was formed to the present day. It is practically conceded on all hands that Messenger, by his own power and by his own right, founded a family of trotting horses, and this fact will be fully demonstrated in coming chapters. It is equally plain and, with honest and intelligent people, it is accepted with equal readiness, that no thoroughbred horse has ever done this. This declaration has been much controverted, but always in a general way and without specifying any particular thoroughbred horse that had succeeded in establishing a family of trotters. In the progress of a discussion of this point with the late Charles J. Foster, a very clear and able writer, he was directly challenged, in a manner that could not be dodged, to name the thoroughbred horse outside of Messenger, that had accomplished this feat. Greatly to my surprise, and I might say, gratification, he came back at me with _two of Messenger’s sons_—Hambletonian and Mambrino. Thus he conceded the whole contention, for out of, literally, thousands he had to come back to two sons of Messenger. In reply to an article in _Wallace’s Monthly_ for December, 1887, going to show that Messenger was not a thoroughbred horse, Mr. Joseph Cairn Simpson, of California, an able man and a lifelong advocate of more running blood in the trotter, wrote a review of the article in question. After admitting the full force of the demonstration that Messenger was not a thoroughbred horse, there is one sentence to which Mr. Simpson cannot subscribe, and he quotes it as follows: “Complete and conclusive as these facts may be, there is still another fact equally complete and still more convincing. Messenger possessed and transmitted qualities that no thoroughbred horse, in the experience of man, ever possessed and transmitted.” This was a declaration of Messenger as a progenitor against the whole world of thoroughbreds, and Mr. Simpson felt that he could not let it pass unchallenged, and after scratching about among the thousands of thoroughbreds without finding anything, like poor Mr. Foster, he “acknowledges the corn,” and comes back with Mambrino, _the son of Messenger_, without, seemingly, once realizing that he was proving my contention.