22 THE RACING WORLD 



keep their eyes open and are able to form a toler- 

 ably shrewd opinion of what is likely to happen ; 

 but these are the exceptions. 



I sat down to write a few introductory remarks 

 to the series of papers which make up this book, 

 but the subject has expanded far beyond the 

 space I intended to occupy. How extraordinarily 

 interesting it would be to lovers of the Turf 

 if they had a really accurate description of the 

 manner in which racing was carried on, say, a 

 hundred years ago ! No such book is procurable, 

 so far as I am aware, and with regard to racing as 

 it is practised at the present day a great many mis- 

 taken notions are current. I have thought, there- 

 fore, that a detailed account of " The Racing 

 World and its Inhabitants," as it exists at the 

 present time, would be of value to-day, and would 

 remain a serviceable source of information to those 

 who in the future would like to know how the 

 sport was conducted at the beginning of the 

 twentieth century. In this belief I have been 

 fortunate enough in securing the assistance of a 

 number of unquestionable authorities, who have 

 written the following chapters. 



With very few exceptions it has been the rule 

 of the Badminton Magazine, in which these chapters 

 appeared, to publish authors' names. Names, how- 



