FROM HOWL FOR 'RECIPROCITY' TO PRESENT DAY 247 



Golightly for the Twenty-ninth Triennial at Newmarket 

 First October) ; but of the two-year-olds, Commandant, 

 Mademoiselle Clairon, and Swift, none ran in England. 



The number of times that some of these French 

 horses ran second or third in England must strike the 

 most inadvertent reader ; and sometimes — such was their 

 ill luck — when ' on paper ' it seemed a ' good thing ' for 

 them. Some of the animals mentioned deserve notice 

 for other reasons. The magnificent proportions of 

 Verneuil and his sale have already been spoken of; but 

 it should be added that (according to Lord Suffolk) the 

 cause why Count F. de Lagrange did not receive the 

 telegram in time to close with the American's offer of 

 10,000/. for Verneuil was that the Count was ill — too ill 

 to go to the Jockey Club (in Rue Scribe), to which the 

 telegram had been sent — and that the sapient porter of 

 that Club, after mature consideration, decided to keep 

 the telegram till the Count put in an appearance, which 

 was three or four months too late. That porter ought 

 to have been sued for 2,000Z. Balagny was remarkable 

 as a ' savage,' like our Merlin (son of Castrel), General 

 Chasse, and many others ; he was sold some years after 

 1878 to a gentleman (an Italian at Milan, if memory may 

 be depended upon) by whom he was occasionally ridden, 

 and whom he one day dislodged, deposited upon the turn- 

 pike road, worried, and all but killed on the spot. Swift 

 was remarkable for losing only once out of the ten races 

 (no ' walk over ') that she ran at two years of age (in 

 France and Belgium) — and even then she was ' placed ' 

 (third to Phenix and Faisan, three years each, for the 

 Prix de la Foret at Chantilly) — and for being utterly 

 unable at three and four years of age to win a single 

 race (worth mentioning, if at all). It is easy to say 

 that ' this comes of running or over-running at two 



