228 TALES OF THE TURF. 



necessary for any purpose, a coupe harness being lighter. 

 They have collar and names, the latter standing high 

 above the collar and ornamented with pure gold at the 

 tops and with tassels and gay ribbons. Even-one is a 

 race-goer. The horses never make a break and have only 

 two gaits, walk and trot. There is no such thing as an 

 interfering boot of any description, nor a toe-weight, and 

 none is needed. All the horses are clean-gaited, smooth 

 and frictionless, and they can fairly fly. Watches are 

 used verv similar to mv own, but time is divided differ- 

 ently. In all my travels I stuck to my fly-back watch, and 

 it has been examined and admired by many jewelers here. 

 The horses trot heats on straight-away courses. I have 

 no means of telling exactly the distance, but have meas- 

 ured several of the courses the best I can, which of course 

 is partly a guess, and as near as I can figure it they are 

 five thousand five hundred and fifty feet long, certainly 

 longer than American tracks. The meetings are man- 

 aged practically as the American meetings are, horses 

 being divided into classes according to records, which they 

 keep with great accuracy ; scoring the same, or rather not 

 the same, for the drivers try to get off. Now, I'm going 

 to tell something that will prove how far they are ahead 

 of American people in mechanics. The judges occupy a 

 small portion of the middle of the grand stand, which is 

 two stories in height and about seven hundred and fifty 

 feet long. Immediately on the start being given the grand 

 stand starts also and keeps up with the leading horse, no 

 matter at what speed, as that is under the control of the 

 engineer. Every inch of the race is therefore under im- 

 mediate observation. Think of it, an immense structure 

 with probably twenty thousand people flying along a race 

 track at better than a two-minute gait, and that means 



