270 THE ENGLISH TURF 



to obtain the best possible interest on their invested capital, 

 and who, if their yearlings are not ready for Newmarket 

 or Doncaster, probably miss their market altogether. 



As things now are, two-year-old racing is practised on the 

 first day and on almost every subsequent day of the flat- 

 racing season ; and in the very first week of racing, which is 

 the last week of March, such valuable prizes as the Brocklesby 

 Stakes at Lincoln and the Molyneux and Sefton Park Plates 

 at Liverpool have been on ofTer. In every programme, from 

 the first to the last week of the racing year, two-year-olds 

 are catered for, in many instances with great liberality ; 

 thus there is every temptation to the racehorse-owner to run 

 his young stock early, and try to recoup the cost of its 

 rearing or purchase as soon as possible. Of course there are 

 some men who are content to wait and who will not have 

 their young stock forced, either by the stud groom or by the 

 trainer, but this class of owner is very scarce, and in a large 

 majority of cases the possessor of a young racehorse, 

 whether he has bought or bred the youngster, wishes for 

 a return of his outlay at the earliest possible opportunity. 

 It seems to me, then, that the system under which stakes 

 for two-year-olds are offered in such profusion is more to 

 blame than the breeder for the forcing of blood stock which 

 at present exists ; but without reform of the most sweeping 

 character the system cannot be altered, for if two-year-olds 

 were not allowed to run until, say, the ist of August, as 

 is the custom in France, it would be impossible to fill the 

 programmes of the first four months of the racing season 

 as meetings are at present arranged. If clerks of the 

 course did succeed in filling their cards without the two- 

 year-olds, we should have the same platers running day 

 after day, and after a while there would be a great falling 

 ofT in the size of the fields. There is in my opinion only 

 one way in which the Turf could continue to flourish without 

 two-year-old racing in the first half of the season, and that 

 is by establishing prizes for four-year-olds equal in value 

 to the existing three-year-old prizes, and by enacting that 

 no two-year-old prize between the ist of August and the 

 end of November should be worth more than 500. The 



