CHAPTER X. 



EARLY TRIALS. 



THE highest yearling trial which has ever come on good 

 authority to our personal knowledge was that of General 

 Peel's Peter, by Hermit out of Lady Masham. He was tried 

 on Christmas Day, 1877, at 10 Ibs. with Wanderer, an old 

 horse, and beat him a head three furlongs. In the following 

 March he had improved 17 Ibs., as by that time he could 

 give Wanderer 7 Ibs. It was in that month that Wanderer ran 

 Oxonian to a head at even weights in the Buccleuch Cup at 

 Northampton, and the next day won the Delapre Handicap, 

 carrying top weight fair selling-plate form this ; but just at 

 this time Peter met with an accident, and could not be 

 brought out till Goodwood, when from Wheel of Fortune he 

 experienced his only two-year-old defeat. His subsequent 

 career is too well known to need repetition. 



T. Jennings, senior, a persistent trier of yearlings, who, 

 weather permitting, always asks them some sort of question in 

 December, says that the best baby he ever stripped was Ecossais, 

 whom, through the medium of Luisette, a five-year-old filly, 

 thoroughly trustworthy in public or private, he tried in Decem- 

 ber 1872 to be collaterally as good at 3 stone as Prince Charlie, 

 then in the zenith of his career. 



The equation is not easy to prove, but it must work out, if 

 at all, somewhat after this fashion : 



At Doncaster Prince Charlie, 8 st. 10 Ibs., beat Chopette, 

 8 st. 7 Ibs., in the Doncaster Stakes, and probably gave her a 

 7 Ibs. beating. At Newmarket Second October Luisette, 7 st. 



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