EARLY TRIALS. 



141 



in the estimation of handicappers, was right up at the top of 

 the handicap tree ; yet Saraband could only get third in the 

 great race. 



These two, Mr. Peck says, were the best two-year-olds he 

 ever tried no small saying if we remember that one of them 

 had The Bard for a stable companion to phrase it more 

 exactly, they were companions in confederate stables and 

 surely there seems to be a marked tendency to increase the 

 severity of competitive examinations during the past fifteen 

 years. 



Oceanic from T. Jennings's stable was another real rlyer. Her 

 first three engagements as a two-year-old were the Newmarket 

 Spring Plate, the Epsom two -year-old Plate, and the New Stakes 

 at Ascot. These she won in a common canter; and after Ascot, 

 as she was entered with her stable companion Phenix in the 

 July Cup, wherein they had Trappist and Hackthorpe to meet, 

 a trial between Count de Lagrange's pair was deemed advisable. 

 On June 29, three days before the commencement of the 

 July meeting, they were galloped with Dora and Tafna as 

 follows : 



Six furlongs. 



Won easily by six lengths, ten lengths between second and 

 third, ten lengths third and fourth. 



This easy victory, be it remembered, was achieved at 16 Ibs., 

 over a four-year-old no less redoubtable than Phenix, the winner 

 of the Rous Memorial at Ascot, and the hero of that historical 

 riot at Epsom, where the mob, infuriated at his defeat by 

 Paul's Cray, proposed to lynch both Jennings and J. Goater. 

 They caught a Tartar, though, in old Tom, who knocked over 



