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alone three to four months hard at it, as ours are expected 

 to do out here. The Average Cup winner, therefore, must 

 be a good-footed and good-legged one, a horse that will 

 carry a fair weight and jump a fair fence, a good doer 

 at home, a brave hero in the field ; otherwise he is of no 

 manner of use for the enterprise. As a rule, we find that 

 it is the handy, clever sort, possessing no great pace, but 

 at the same time foot enough to get into the first qualifying 

 six each week that wins this Cup, and not your race- 

 horse. The galloper is an excellent machine to have when 

 it is all fairly open sailing, as it sometimes is in a Paper- 

 chase Cup, but for an all-round, general utility, sort for 

 obtaining the Average Cup, give us the horse that will 

 turn in his own length, will crawl where he cannot jump 

 and yet will stride at and fly a good big fence when he is 

 asked to do so. The pulling, rowdy, impetuous sort is 

 not the oyster for this contest, and as we glance through 

 the list of the winners, which we print at the foot of this 

 chapter, we do not see a single horse amongst them off 

 whom at a pinch it would not have been possible to play 

 polo. Another noteworthy fact also is that the majority of 

 the winners have been little ones, for the big sort have 

 only scored on rare occasions. Bannagher was a horse 

 about 15-3, Kettledrum ditto, Eau de Vie probably a bit 

 more. Lilac 16 hands, Monte Carlo just under that. Rivalry 

 and Diablo also about that height ; but all the rest have 

 been between 14-3 and 15-2 at the outside — some of them. 

 absolute ponies. 



The conditions of this Cup have been set out in 

 the third chapter, and it is, therefore, unnecessary for 

 us to recapitulate them here, the only point to be noted 

 concerning them now being that they do not permit of 

 an owner's qualifying a second horse specially for the 

 Paperchase Cup, and going for the Average Cup as 

 well, as the rules now insist that the Paperchase Cup horse 



