644 



A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



at Ascot, the Prince of Wales would have won Oaks and Derby in the same year. 

 Florizcl II. was even less promising as a two-year-old, but in his fourth year his 

 only defeat was almost as creditable as his six successes, for he carried gst. into 

 fourth place for the Cesarewitch ; and judging from Volodyovski, Mackintosh, 

 Floriform, and Doricles, he may be said to have begun brilliantly at the stud. 



The first time Persimmon had his clothes off in a trial he gave 35lb. and a 

 beating to Rags, winner of the Sudbroke Selling Plate at Lincoln in 1895, to 

 whom all the Egerton House two-year-olds failed to give i4lb. He could not 

 be got fit for the Two Thousand, and looked a rather slovenly, sprawling colt 



until he began to take a turn for 

 the better, when he improved with 

 great rapidity. But he seemed so 

 to resent locomotion by steam that 

 it appeared probable they would 

 never get him by train to Epsom 

 at all. At last Marsh called out 

 in despair: " I'll give a sovereign 

 apiece to those who help get him 

 in." Half Newmarket was at him 

 in a moment, lifted him fairly off 

 his legs, and swept him into the 

 box, where he began to eat his 

 corn with a supercilious air of 

 wonder that so much fuss was 

 being made. Marsh had to explain 

 that he did not carry the Derby stakes in his pocket, and all of the assistants 

 could not get their sovereign then ; but no doubt they made it later on, when the 

 great colt beat St. Frusquin by a neck, and there was a scene of tremendous 

 enthusiasm, culminating, when the Prince took his leading-rein from Marsh at the 

 weighing-in enclosure, in such cheers as have rarely been heard even on the 

 Epsom Downs. The two rivals were so closely matched that the 3lb. Persimmon 

 had to give St. Frusquin in the Princess of Wales's Stakes would almost exactly 

 account for his half-length defeat. Of the cardinal points in the excellence of a 

 thoroughbred as described by Sir John Hills, the most important are the perpen- 

 dicularity of the slope from the point of the shoulder to the point of the elbow, 



His Majesty's "Mead? by "Persimmon." 



