THREE- YEAR-OLDS. 169 



flyer he afterwards became. On the whole, the old plater Incen- 

 diary seems to us to have emerged from the struggle with the 

 most glory. 



Let it not be supposed, however, that we have any wish to 

 detract from the merits of St. Blaise. ' He did what he was 

 asked to do ' more than can be said of most horses. He won 

 the Derby, which can be said of only one horse a year, and he 

 was an excellent second in the Grand Prix. 



His subsequent failure is attributed, no doubt justly, to a 

 sprain of the muscles of the arm. His racing career is ended. 

 May joy go with him, and may he prove a success at the 

 stud ! 



We heartily wish that we had at command information 

 from all the leading stables as to the trials of the various 

 ' cracks ' who in time past have gone forth to victory from their 

 gates ; the subject is so fraught with interest that it would be 

 hardly possible to satiate the regular turfite therewith, but the 

 reader must know that all trainers do not keep trial-books. Many 

 who do keep them destroy them every two or three years ; and 

 in other cases these records are for some reason or another 

 inaccessible e.g. the books of the late John of Danebury, which 

 we believe to be in existence, but in whose hands we are not 

 aware, though Thomas Cannon would probably pay a hand- 

 some price to the present possessor. 



Lord Falmouth, though he never betted after he became an 

 owner of racehorses, and was therefore not forced into trials 

 by his betting-book, was nevertheless in the habit of ' putting 

 them together ' pretty frequently as a matter of curiosity, or 

 of scientific recreation, and he and his paragon of trainers, 

 Matthew Dawson, perhaps made as few mistakes as any two 

 men who ever stripped horses in private. The wish may have 

 been father to the thought with them as with others, but the 

 money never was mother to the practice, and we fancy that 

 they never bamboozled themselves in the almost invariably 

 futile attempt to delude the omnipresent tout, by having a 

 horse pulled up in his trial, when in his rider's opinion he could 



