But notwithstanding the unsatisfactory plan of its construction, it has been honestly compiled, and we may safely accept its contents, back as far as the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Mr. Weatherby began his work; but when we reach the period of the eighteenth century, facts, fables and frauds are so inextricably mixed that whatever we accept must be _cum grano salis_. Beyond that period Mr. Weatherby furnishes nothing but the wildest fancies and traditions shaped up by those contributing them with a view to lengthen a pedigree and a price accordingly. All that we can ever know of the horses of that period we must gather from the little snatches dropped by contemporaneous historians. In establishing his “General Stud Book,” Mr. Weatherby’s work may be compared to the building of an embankment around a great field which contained all the race horses of the realm. They were of all colors, all markings and all sizes, except the monster cart horse and the diminutive Shetland. They had all raced or possessed blood that had raced, and they all had pedigrees of various lengths and various degrees of reliability. They all walked and trotted and galloped, and there was not a pacer among them, for the last pacer had disappeared from England probably fifty years before this. The antagonism of the Saracenic horse had triumphed, and that antagonism was bred in the blood and bone of every animal in the field. They were placed there to be inter-bred and to produce race horses. Every one of the thousand owners was anxious to produce a great winner, and he was left to the exercise of his own fancy and judgment as to what cross would be most likely to prove successful, and to vindicate his superior intelligence. With, all experimenting outside of the breed practically barred, the instincts of the breed ripened and intensified until its representatives are able to beat the fleetest in the world at the gallop, but they could neither walk fast nor trot fast. It is doubtful whether any person in the world has ever seen a true-bred race horse that could trot a mile in four minutes. At this gait they show no aptness nor speed whatever. By breeding to fit the modern methods of racing, the speed of the race horse has been greatly increased, for short distances, but his stamina and endurance no longer command admiration as in former generations. In the latter half of the last century there were a good many excellent trotters in England, but the further we get away from the blood of the old English pacer, the fewer the trotters we find, until at last there are none at all. It seems to be true of all countries that where there are no pacers there are no trotters. It was not the purpose nor wish of the English people to banish the trotter, but when the pacer was banished the trotter soon followed him. CHAPTER VII. THE AMERICAN RACE HORSE.