22G HORSE-RACING IN FRANCE 



Placida and to Warren Hastings) at Bibury Club Meet- 

 ing ; more still when Doncereuse ran second to Silvio for 

 the Ham Stakes and Chamant to Shillelas^h for the 

 Lavant Stakes at Goodwood, and when the latter won 

 the Priory Stakes at Lewes ; but not until the autumn, 

 not until the Doncaster Meeting, did the Englishmen 

 begin to fully recognise the French demon that was 

 upon them. No sooner was one French two-year-old 

 defeated than another came on. Chamant is nowhere 

 for the Champagne Stakes, and immediately his ' com- 

 patriot ' Verneuil steps forward and wins the Glasgow 

 Stakes, though he had been beaten at Goodwood and 

 thouo-h he starts the least fancied of the first three ; but 

 he fails to get within three lengths of Lady Golightly 

 for the Wentworth. After this, however, when the 

 Newmarket Autumn Meetings begin, French victories 

 in the great two-year-old races succeed one another 

 so rapidly as to become almost monotonous. Verneuil 

 wins the Buckenham Stakes (beating Silvio, iiota bene), 

 Leopold wins the Rutland Stakes (these at the First 

 October) ; Chamant wins the Middle Park Plate (at the 

 Second October) ; and at the Houghton Meeting Jong- 

 leur wins the Criterion (with two other ' foreigners,' 

 Verneuil and the Voltella colt behind him), Chamant 

 wins the Dewhurst Plate, and Sugarloaf wins the 

 Houghton Plate. It appears, then, to the British lion 

 that not only do these plaguy French win English races 

 of the highest order, but that they sometimes occupy 

 tlie first three places ; that in Chamant, Jongleur, 

 and Verneuil (Saint-Christophe not yet being quite 

 revealed) they have probably the best two-year-olds of 

 the year, about to be the best three-year-olds of the 

 next ; and that as the Derby of 1876 was won by a 

 ' foreigner ' so very probably will the Derby of 1877 be 



