BRITISH STABLES AND FOREIGN METHODS. 



547 



would prove an infallible guide. It is an old adage that a badly built one never 

 won the Derby. But its truth has been confirmed by not a few exceptions. 

 Fashionable strains of blood provide no surer indication ; yet breeding must be 

 a most important factor in the problem, or nearly all previous records must be 

 meaningless. On the whole, I take it that your perfect trainer must know enough 

 of the ways of the thoroughbred, and estimate his own skill and opportunities 

 sufficiently well, to be able to judge whether a yearling is worth taking trouble 

 over or not ; he must, above all, be broadminded enough to realise that if there 



Bv permission of His Majesty the King. 



The Yearlings Boxes, Sandringham. 



is no such thing as certainty of success, the balance is held level by the fact that 

 certain failure is almost equally difficult of prediction until everything possible has 

 been tried. 



But if your trainer be the most perfect in the world, his work and his com- 

 binations will be ruined unless he has a trustworthy, capable, and silent head lad, 

 with a conscience as fine as his hands, and a head as sound as his heart. \\ ith 

 something approaching such an one, a stable will lose a multitude of worries, and 

 its horses will benefit accordingly, for the brutes have the queerest knack of picking 



