300 HORSEMANSHIP. 



unless obliged to strike his horse, a jockey always 

 holds his horse's head with both hands. If a 

 double rein to a curb-bit is used, the near-side rein 

 passes between middle and third fingers of the left 

 hand, and the off-side one between the middle and 

 third fingers of the right hand. On the word being 

 given, as we have already said, he sticks the spurs 

 into his horse's sides, or, by any other means in his 

 power, gets him on his legs — that is, on his speed 

 — as soon as he possibly can, dropping his hand to 

 him to enable him to feel his mouth. He lets him 

 go perhaps half the distance he has to run with 

 only his head hard held, before he gives him his 

 first pull ; but this event (the half-mile race) being 

 soon over, there is no time for much speculation, and 

 the pull must be but a short one. He then runs up 

 to his horses again ; lives with them to the end, 

 and wins, if he can, without a second pull ; but if 

 he finds other horses too near to be pleasant, or, in 

 other words, appearing to be as good as his own, 

 he takes a second pull within the last one or two 

 hundred yards, when he again lets loose and wins. 

 The same directions hold good in a mile race, with 

 the exception that the jockey need not be quite so 

 much on the qui mm at starting, and his pulls may 

 be longer, and the last further from home. 



The Half-mile race. Orders, " To wait.'''' In 

 this case, the jockey gets well away with his horses, 

 but never more than a length behind any of them, 

 as more than that distance is diflicult to make up 

 in so short a race. Within a hundred and fifty, or 

 perhaps two hundred yards of liome, he gets " head 



