THE TURF. 
inquired Mr. Wilson. " We shall be watched, sir," 
replied the trainer ; " and the old horse's (t. e. the trial 
horse) white fore leg will be sure to let out the cat." 
" Leave that to me," said Mr. Wilson ; " I shall be at 
the stable before you go out with the horses." And, 
coming prepared with the materials for the purpose, he 
painted the white fore leg of the old horse black, and 
the fellow one of the colt white ; and so they went to 
the ground. The old one, as may be supposed, ran 
the fastest and longest ; but, being mistaken by the 
" touter" for the young one, his fame soon spread 
abroad, and he was sold the next day to the noble 
viscount for fifteen hundred guineas, being somewhere 
about eleven hundred more than he was worth. But the 
march of intellect and roguery, which appears to have 
run a dead heat on the turf, has made people wiser and 
sharper respecting such matters as these. The Marquis 
of Exeter keeps his trying saddles under his own locks ; 
and has a machine for weighing his trial riders, which 
shews the weights to himself, and to no one but himself.* 
But to return for a moment to the effect of weight 
on the race-horse. Perhaps an instance of the most 
minute observation of this effect is to be found in a race 
at Newcastle-under-Lyne, some years back, between 
four horses handicapped by the celebrated Dr. Bellyse, 
namely, Sir John Egerton's Astbury, four years old, 
* The uninitiated in these matters are not perhaps aware, that horses 
are often matched at Newmarket for large sums, though with the certainty 
of losing, merely for the advantage of a trial with a good horse. 
142 
