426 



A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



one which can be proved to exist by any one who cares to work out the figures from 

 the volumes of the General Stud Book. Even if we do possess the raw material as 

 good as ever, as I believe we do, it seems to be given absolutely as small a chance 

 as possible of useful perpetuation in the future, owing to the sport of the few having 

 become the business of the many. The very Jockey Club itself, the guardian of 

 the highest interests of the English thoroughbred and the English Turf, has 

 sanctioned a prize for two-year-olds worth six thousand pounds in April. 

 Instead of increasing the inducements to race a four-year-old and more mature 

 animal by increasing the prizes open to him, they have gone exactly in the 

 opposite direction by decreasing to its farthest point the possibility of a horse 



ever lasting on the 

 Turf till he is four 

 or five ; and they 

 have encouraged the 

 absurdly inflated 

 prices offered for 

 yearlings by holding 

 out the possibility of 

 a speedy emolument 

 that may put dollars 

 into one owner's 

 pocket, but will 

 certainly call into 

 existence a hundred 

 unnecessary and 

 useless screws. Large prices do not invariably spell benefit to the Turf. 



It must not be imagined that either in this respect or in many others, the old 

 original Jockey Club was so very much better than its modern representative. 

 In 1782 they actually asked two-year-olds (carrying "a feather") to run three miles 

 at the Houghton Meeting. The practice of matching youngsters remained far more 

 popular at Newmarket than it did in the North, though I have given my reasons in 

 earlier pages for thinking that it was first introduced by Hutchinson and the Rev. 

 Henry Goodricke in Yorkshire. However that may be, Sir Charles Bunbury had been 

 eight years on the Turf, and the Jockey Club was at least eighteen years old 

 when two-year-olds were expressly authorised to run at Newmarket in the Craven 



"Don John'' (1835) by " Tramp." 



