PREFACE IX 



come when ' Francia fara da se.' Monsieur Edoiiard 

 Cavailhon, of the French sporting iournal ' L'Entrai- 

 neur,' in his lately published work called ' Les Haras 

 de France,' very significantly remarks, ' II faut encore 

 pas mal de temps et de bonne volonte de la part des 

 proprietaires de chevaux pour secouer le joug de la 

 feodahte anglaise dans tout ce qui a rapport aux courses 

 sur les hippodromes, mais dans les differents haras que 

 je viens de parcourir aucun Anglais nest employe' We 

 know too what efforts are being made by French 

 owners, having at their head Monsieur A. Lupin (who 

 holds that ' les sujets fran^ais sont aussi bons que les 

 anglais '), to obtain a supply of native French jockeys, 

 equal to Messrs. Archer, Wood, Barrett, Webb, Cannon, 

 Osborne, Goater, and the rest of that glorious company 

 of accomphshed riders. All this gives a special interest 

 to a history of horse-racing in France. 



The narrative has been so arranged — year by year 

 throughout a considerable, if not the greater, part of 

 it — that readers who do not care to be troubled with 

 details can ' skip,' without losing the continuity of what 

 a great effort has been made to render a lively story ; 

 and that readers who do care for details may, with 

 the further assistance of an index, either find all that 

 they require or at any rate convince themselves that 

 there are ' more where those came from ' and be enabled 

 to look up the more for themselves. 



In the hsts of sires imported from England into 

 France it was frequently difficult to fix the exact date ; 



