4 o6 CAMBRIDGESHIRE TRIALS. 



have beat Weatherbound in the Cambridgeshire he 

 would have had to be put in at 5 st. But this, of 

 course, is absurd, and the fact accounted for, we must 

 suppose, in St. Albans being out of form on the Friday, 

 thus proving the correctness of Mr. Chifney's remark 

 that ' horses cannot be made to keep their form from 

 one day to another.' Still it was ' public running.' 



In 1863 another of mine, Catch 'em Alive, won as 

 a four-year-old, carrying 7 st., and beating thirty- 

 two others. To the dispute as to his carrying the 

 proper weight and the fortunate termination of it, I 

 will refer later. I will only say that in his trial he 

 had shown himself as good as Johnny Armstrong at 

 even weights, and 2^ st. better than Muezzin. For 

 the purposes of. comparison we find Johnny Armstrong 

 on the same day, and in the race immediately pre- 

 ceding the Cambridgeshire, winning the Rowley Mile 

 Plate, beating Croagh Patrick, Caller On, and five 

 others. Caller Ou had that year w r on seventeen races, 

 including the Northumberland Plate, carrying 8 st. 

 8 lb., beating fourteen others. Now this w r as equiva- 

 lent to putting Caller Ou in the Cambridgeshire at 

 6 st. 10 lb., and Johnny Armstrong at 7 st. or there- 

 abouts, or with some 2 st. less on them than they 

 would have carried had they been entered. This 

 made Catch 'em Alices chance on paper a moral, if 

 not an actual certainty. Yet he, like Weatherbound, 

 only won by a head ; though like her from an ac- 

 countable reason — losing so much at the start, and 



