334 FIELD AND FERN, 



horses doing their best could prevail to part them."^ 

 Once through the woods, and the old and new race- 

 courses were right and left of us. In summer time the 

 road is fragrant with sweet-brier and wild roses, to 

 the memory of ^^ Gilbert Glossin,^^ who was agent 

 from Netherby to Port Patrick, and who did not for- 

 get the wayfarers, while he was laying out his own 

 Garden at Tinwald Downs. 



The old race-course was nearly a mile round, and 

 it was here that Charles Marquis of Queensberry 

 trained with John Smith. It was a dead flat, and 

 when the word was given to cross the road, 102 

 ploughs pronounced its doom. The somewhat im- 

 posing gates are still left to the new course, but no 

 racer has passed through them since ^47, and the 

 Southern Meeting is ended. The tents were not 

 pitched of yore in the plain, but confined to an emi- 

 nence at the west end, and the course, which is 

 level, with the exception of a slight dip at the far 

 side — as useful in its day as the Cantley hill at Don- 

 caster — measures one-and-a-half miles round. Mr. 

 Wilkin^s Leicester flock feed there now, and of course 

 the blood mare and foal are as faithful to it as the 

 Dryad to the oak grove, or the '^ Water Baby'^ to the 

 stream. Once Mr. Wilkin determined to breed no 

 more blood stock, and actually gave away Barbara 

 Young out of Eryx^s dam, the last of the old sort. 



* I see from the Dumfries Courier that the dam which obstructed the flow 

 of the Lochar to the sea has just l:)een removed, and that " if the upper pro- 

 prietors only clear and straighten the course of the stream, the present 

 generation may yet see the wilderness converted into smiling corn and 

 grass land." 



