300 FIELD AND FERN. 



even if he has had a first favourite, he has never got 

 through more than two courses. He won the Purse 

 with Black Cloud, but his nomination has been more 

 generally among the sixteen Plate unfortunates, 

 who "take nothing by their motion.^^ However, 

 this has been the fate of many; and David, for 

 instance, went head over heels into the first 

 ditch. 



Scotland and England have cross obligations in 

 the shape of sheets and slips. The Hon. Hamilton 

 Dundas first brought the former from Newmarket to 

 Scotland ; and Mr. Borron, who had been struck 

 with the swivel slips of Marsh, a Paisley gunsmith, 

 took back the idea to Lancashire, which had pre- 

 viously only followed the Newmarket fashion of two 

 ends of a strap coupled or parted with a wedge, or 

 like the Oldfield Lane Doctor on Chat Moss, 

 " started the whole fleet" for a St. Leger. Still, 

 greyhounds do not monopolize Mr. Borron^s hours of 

 idleness in his new sea-home, as a grey mare and a 

 chesnut were in his stable, waiting for their turn 

 with the Eglinton at Tarbert Hill or Southennan. 

 He has always adopted the plan of gilt electro-plating 

 his bits, and considers that when horses have carious 

 teeth it does not make them so fretful, or engender 

 so much saliva. His horses are not bedded on straw, 

 but on pine shavings, which he finds very efficacious 

 in keeping off the plague of fleas. He has also taken a 

 good deal of trouble to ascertain the right tempera- 

 ture of greyhound kennels, and first tried corrugated 



