LORD FALMOUTH 



or Wild JNIyrtle ought to have made certain of 

 beating her. I may safely, therefore, pass on to 

 Atlantic, a chesnut colt by Thormanby out of 

 Hurricane. His two -year -old season gave no 

 great promise, as although he won the Ham 

 Stakes at Goodwood on the occasion of his debut, 

 beating Regal and Apology, this was the only 

 bracket he gained, with the exception of a walk 

 over for the Buckenham Stakes at the Newmarket 

 First October. Tipster just beat him for the 

 Convivial Stakes at York, he failed to get into 

 the first three for the Prendergast Stakes, and 

 JM. Lefevre's JNIinister, a colt of no particular 

 class, defeated him by a head for the Glasgow 

 Stakes at the Houghton Meeting. There is no 

 doubt, however, that Atlantic was a very back- 

 ward youngster, and the improvement that he 

 made from two to three was far beyond the 

 average. A gallop that he had with Andred 

 and Tomahawk over Side Hill in the early spring 

 of 1874 first gave Matthew Dawson an inkling of 

 this, and made him fancy that the colt might make 

 a really good one, and this favourable impression 

 was fully confirmed in a dust-up with Andred and 

 an old horse prior to the Two Thousand. In that 

 event he was ridden by Archer, who had weighed 

 out at 6 st. 1 lb. for the preceding race on the 

 card. It was quite a new departure to put up so 

 much dead weight, and I well remember that the 

 policy of doing so caused a great deal of discussion 

 at the time. The practice has become common 

 enough since then, though it seems to me that the 

 wisdom of it is still open to considerable doubt, 

 unless the circumstances of the case are quite 

 exceptional. Be this as it may, the first experi- 

 ment proved successful, for Atlantic gained a neck 

 verdict from Colonel Carleton's Reverberation, the 



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