INTKODUCTION. 



In preparing this work for the press, I may 

 state that it is composed chiefly of a series of 

 papers on horses and their riders, which 

 appeared a short time since in the columns of 

 The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 

 How they originally came to be written and 

 published may not prove uninteresting. 



One day, in the middle of February 1880, a 

 goodly company, comprising many thousands 

 of persons, assembled upon, the lawn of a 

 nobleman's residence in the vicinity of Dub- 

 lin; ostensibly for the purpose of hunting, 

 but in reality to gaze at and chronicle the 



