PERFORMANCES OF MODERN HORSES. 239 



the opposite ; Flying Childers beating Chanter, 10 stone each, 

 6 miles. I have seen matches run at Newmarket over the 

 yearling course, 2 furlongs and 52 yards. Now we seldom 

 run over t\v^o miles, or less than five furlongs, with horses 

 older than two years old ; anything under that distance being 

 proscribed by the rules of the Jockey Club. 



Races in those days were run for in heats, a custom long 

 since abandoned ; and nowadays, as has been said, shorter 

 courses are substituted for those of four miles, except in a 

 very few instances. Fortunately a morbid desire no longer 

 exists to witness such cruel feats of endurance as the one 

 which took place over the old course at Stockbridge between 

 Cavterton, Shoe String, Office Dyke, and Scoi'pion, when the 

 last named died on the course, Shoe String ran herself blind, 

 and the other two were never afterwards good for anything. 



There is a great contrast, too, in the number of times that 

 a horse will run in the present day, as compared with the 

 past. To-day a horse will be raced ten times as often as in 

 the old times ; for we find that in 1750, only one horse in ten 

 was raced a second time. What would Lord Portman and 

 his contemporaries of that year, who were content to run 

 each horse but once, or at the utmost twice a year, think of 

 the performances of Fisherman and other horses of recent 

 times ! Fisherman ran in one year, thirty-five times, and 

 secured twenty-one victories, amongst them the Ascot Cup, 

 two miles and a half, and immediately afterwards on the 

 same day, the Queen's Plate about three miles ; and it does 

 not appear that these or his other numerous races did him the 

 shghtest harm. This feat, it should be remembered, was 

 much more trying than to run heats in which the same horses 

 only are met again and again. Isoline accomplished a similar 

 task at Goodwood. These were good horses, if not like 



.if* 



