^x 



AIY OWN EXPERIENCE, AND INFERENCES. 49 



of those belonging to others) stoutly declared in these cases 

 that neither were fit, though their running then and subse- 

 quently sufficiently proved the folly of such an opinion and 

 the penalty incurred in uttering it. 



Even trainers may be, and no doubt some of us at times 

 are, deceived. As a proof that the public are not always 

 alone in this respect, I confess to having been grievously 

 deceived on two or three occasions. One Act misled me, and 

 so did a colt by Coranna out oi Eyebright. As a three-year-old, 

 I thought St. Giles fit and tried him, but he was little 

 more than half fit to run a distance of ground, and was dis- 

 gracefully beaten in his trial ten days before Northampton. 

 Knowing that, as a two-year-old, he had stayed well, I con- 

 cluded he must require more work than he had had, to make 

 him stay as a three-year-old, I therefore galloped him every 

 day two miles till the Saturday previous to the race, and then 

 tried him, with the same tackle and the same weight, over the 

 same course, when he won just as far as before he had been 

 defeated. He went to Northampton and won the stakes with 

 ease, beating perhaps the best horse in England {^Skirmisher) 

 according to his subsequent running. 



The case of One Act is very similar ; the mare having, as I 

 thought, done sufficiently good work for months previously, I 

 tried her, when she w^as beaten very easily. This I attributed 

 to her condition, or rather the want of it, and set about im- 

 proving it in the same method — galloping her every day, two 

 and a quarter miles till just before her race at York. I sent 

 her for this as I had done St. Giles, and with the same fortunate 

 result. She won the two great handicaps at York, and fol- 

 lowed up these successes by winning the Chester Cup in the 

 following week, " looking like a rail." These facts, it maybe 

 readily conceived, remain indelibly engraven in my memory. 



E 



