Horses of To-day 463 



It was also the season when Reina, running for 

 Mr. A. Featherstone, beat old Advance Guard and 

 a big field in the Brooklyn. It was the year when 

 we saw the first of Irish Lad, and his winning of 

 the Special at Saratoga was the first race which 

 suggested that he might be a future champion. 

 It was the time of the coming to us also of Afri- 

 cander. Hermis had been a bad two-year-old, but 

 when he began his running in the East late in his 

 three-year-old season, after Gold Heels had gone 

 lame and Major Daingerfield was temporarily out 

 of commission, Hermis became the most talked- 

 about animal in the country. The history of his 

 sale during the Saratoga meeting by H. M. Ziegler 

 to L. V. Bell, and then the after sale by Mr. Bell 

 to E. R. Thomas, for a price generally supposed to 

 be ^60,000, is familiar to every one. After Mr. 

 Bell came to own him, Hermis won nine straight 

 races, though he did not put any of the really 

 great stakes to his credit for the reason that he 

 was not up to his proper form in the early part of 

 the season when they were being run. There 

 was no great commanding two-year-old that sea- 

 son, though the average was high. 



In the following year, that is to say, in 1903, a 

 remarkable condition existed upon the turf. We 



