88 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PL A Y 



Racing is an amusement which is natural to 

 some animals, and is very soon learnt by others, 

 and becomes one of their most exciting pastimes. 

 Many horses, and all racing dogs, soon learn to be 

 as keen on winning as public schoolboys in a half- 

 mile handicap. It is a common impulse with horses 

 to pass, or at least to keep up with, any other 

 horse in their company, and this instinct, developed 

 by training, makes the professional racehorse eager to 

 win. He at least is no partner in the frauds of 

 owners or jockeys. The year that the Duke of 

 Portland's celebrated horse ' St Simon ' won his first 

 race a nursery stakes for untried colts there were 

 a dozen or more other colts at the starting-post, 

 near the Red House on Doncaster Town Moor. 

 Many of them were ridden by small boys, who 

 had the geatest difficulty in controlling the efforts 

 of the young horses to break away, and the eager- 

 ness of the colts to get a good start was quite equal 

 to that of their riders. Those horses which refuse 

 to start, or sulk when running, have usually been 

 the victims of whip and spur in some race in which 

 their powers were overtaxed ; and the memory of 

 such experience, which prompted one horse, when at 

 walking exercise in a string at Newmarket, to turn 

 and bite Archer, who was passing them in review, 

 causes, some others to shrink from the start. But 



