MODERN BETTING ILLUSTRATED, ETC. 213 



battle wages, many thousand pounds will certainly 

 change hands. 



Prizes are provided for the thirty-two dogs 

 which are beaten in the first round of the Cup ; 

 these are the Purse and Plate, on which (locally) 

 a vast amount of betting also takes place. No 

 calculation of the amount of money which 

 changes hands or is betted on the great Altcar 

 contest has ever been made. It has, however, 

 been more than once publicly stated that a 

 W^aterloo dog can be, and has been, backed 

 to win a sum of ^40,000 for behoof of its 

 owner and his friends and followers, while it 

 is often enough the case that dogs hailing from 

 some populous locality, dogs which have a name, 

 are entrusted with the sovereigns of four or five 

 thousand persons. It would be no exaggera- 

 tion to say, generally, of the Waterloo Cup 

 that probably a dozen out of the sixty-four dogs 

 nominated will be backed on the average to win 

 (at the long odds) ^25,000 each, whilst ten may 

 be entrusted with the odds to win some ^10,000, 

 making for these dogs a sum of ^400,000, which 

 has been laid at various rates of odds, and it 

 may be taken that the other forty-two dogs will 

 be backed before the contest is over to win 

 /r 00,000. Only one dog, of course, can win, 

 so that as a rule bookmakers should be largely 

 in pocket, especially when most of the favourites 

 are beaten in the first round — no improbable 

 event ; other animals then come into prominence 

 and are heavily backed. A provincial book- 

 maker, who never betted to more than pound 

 stakes, told the writer that on the first two days of 

 Snowflight's year (1882) he gained a clear profit of 



