24 TALES AND TRAITS OF SPORTING LIFE. 



keep liim specially to win the Derby, liis expenses to and 

 at Epsom will be but some eight pounds more. The 

 stake is one of fifty pounds each, the jockey's fee for a 

 " chance " mount is three pounds — he will expect five 

 hundred if he should win — and so by the time that 

 lilac body and red sleeves is ^^ coloured" on the card 

 — by the time that those three-and-thirty thoroug*h-bred 

 colts have dipped down from the paddock to the post, 

 there is not one among'st them who faces the flag- but has 

 €ost some four hundred pounds to get there. During' the 

 year 1861, between eig-hteen and nineteen hundred horses 

 actually ran in England and Ireland, while there were 

 many others which, from a variety of circumstances, never 

 appeared, although in training*. Beyond these, even, T^e 

 must include the steeple -chasers, whose names rarely 

 appear in the strictly legitimate records of Weatherby. 

 And we may thus guess at the amount of money ex- 

 pended on horse-flesh, living at the rate of from two pounds 

 five shillings to two pounds ten shillings a week each 

 horse. The large breeding establishments, the outrageously 

 heavy travelling expenses, when a horse pays a guinea a 

 night for his box, and other items of outlay, we must not 

 stay to consider, but ^' keeping " them to their work when 

 at home, they have, of course, the very best of oats and 

 hay, all bought in at the best prices ; while a trainer 

 will often pay a farmer more for the privilege to exercise 

 on a down, than the tenant gives for it as a sheep-walk. 

 So far from this being a detriment to the land, " the 

 bite " is nowhere so sweet as where the horses gallop ; 

 and the flock will continue to follow the string, as they 

 change from one side of the hill to the other. 



Let us leave the high-mettled where we first found 

 him, in such good companionship, with the little lambs 



