JUDGES AND JUDGING 131 



friend (having perhaps backed b) will be positively 

 certain that my verdict is utterly wrong,^ If any- 

 one wishes to ascertain how hard it is for a person 

 not in a line with the winning post to say what 

 has won, a test can readily be applied. Run gently, 

 or even walk, up the middle of the Rowley Mile, 

 and try to put a stick in the ground exactly in a 

 line with the two posts. Then go into the box 

 and see where the stick has been placed, and it is 

 tolerably certain that it will be an astonishingly 

 long way out. I have heard that it was the late 

 George Fordham who first suggested that this 

 test should be tried. A comment had been made 

 on the difficulty of knowing just where the 

 winning post was when riding a race ; some 

 ignorant person expressed doubts about any such 

 difficulty existing, and he was invited to try. It 

 has been calculated, I may here observe, that 

 there is one dead-heat in every sixty races. Who 

 made the calculation, and over how long a period 

 the researches on which the figures are based 



^ Angles deceive the most experienced men. Thus the late 

 Duke of Beaufort, watching the Two Thousand Guineas in 

 1880, had no sort of doubt that Muncaster had beaten his colt 

 Petronel. " A couple of strides further and I should just have 

 won!" he remarked, turning away. "But you have won, 

 Duke ! " a friend, looking over at the judge's box, replied, and 

 the owner's astonishment was great to see that his colt's number 

 was hoisted. — Ed. 



K 2 



