On the other side there were some little scraps of history, that at the vital point may have been history or may have been fiction. In the certificate of sale of Abdallah, April 27, 1830, to Mr. Isaac Snediker, his breeder, Mr. John Tredwell, says: “And believe him to be the very _best bred_ trotting stallion in this country, and be it enough to know that his sire was Mambrino and his dam Amazonia.” It has been argued that it would be very inconsistent for a man of Mr. Tredwell’s standing to certify that Abdallah “was the very best bred trotting stallion in this country,” if he knew nothing of the blood of his dam, drawing the inference that he must have known and believed the representations of his nephew, B. T. Kissam, from whom he got Amazonia. The story of the original purchase of Amazonia by B. T. Kissam and given to me by his brother, Timothy T. Kissam, in 1870, is as follows: Amazonia was purchased by B. T. Kissam, a dry goods merchant of New York, when on an excursion of pleasure in the vicinity of Philadelphia about 1814. She was brought out of a team and was then four years old past, his attention having been called to her as an animal of much promise. He used her for his own driving a short time and sold her to his uncle, John Tredwell. “Amazonia was represented to my brother to have been a get of imported Messenger.” Now, in considering whether this scrap of history is probably true, the geographical question has been urged with telling effect. Messenger had been kept a number of years on both sides of the Delaware, right on the way to Philadelphia, his fee had been above that of any other stallion, and a large percentage of his colts had been kept entire. In no part of the country, perhaps, were there so many sons of Messenger seeking public patronage. The geography and the chronology of the question, therefore, both sustain the probability of its truthfulness. Whether Mr. Kissam crossed the river at Trenton, or Burlington, or Camden he was right in the hotbed of the sons of Messenger. “If Amazonia” it has been asked, “was as coarse and forbidding as represented in her appearance, what induced Mr. Kissam to buy her?” He wanted a carriage horse and he wanted one that could not only show good action, but one that had a right of inheritance to good action. He knew the Messengers and knew that beauty and style were not family traits in that tribe. Many of them were coarse, and possibly as coarse as Amazonia. Her very coarseness and lack of style is, under the circumstances, a strong argument that in choosing her Mr. Kissam had regard for her Messenger blood.