262 Saddle and Sirloin. 



up at Blair Athol's side, and beat him. It was on 

 Knavesmire also that we remember poor Bill Scott 

 having his last mount, a second on Snowball to Alfred 

 Day on Tuscan. It is only twenty-two years ago, 

 and yet seven out of the nine jockeys who rode in 

 that race are dead. 



In his way there were few more genuine Yorkshire 

 lovers of racing than the late Sir William Milner. We 

 seem to see him still, with his tall, light figure, his 

 aquiline nose, his rather lank, black hair, and his glass 

 in his eye, following a winner out of the York enclo- 

 sure to have another peep at him before he was 

 sheeted up, or on the pavement (or rather the horse- 

 block) at the Salutation, getting a good " oversight" 

 of a yearling, which old Mr. Tattersall or his son were 

 knocking down. Lord Strathmore was just coming 

 into notice then, and a good-looking young fellow 

 he was, with that curious way of toeing the ground 

 in his walk, and that off-hand devil-me-care toss of the 

 head, as he seized the passing hour, and little thought 

 that Sweetmeat would beget Saccharometer to his 

 sorrow. 



Racing was in the Milner family, as turf chronicles 

 knew well, and gradually came out in the Oxonian. 

 " Mr. Milner" was christened after him. He had a few 

 race-horses in his time, along with the Aske string, of 

 which Grapeshot was much the best though he re- 



put on for every eighth of an inch ; so that horses of fourteen hands 

 carried 9st., and of fifteen hands, list. 



Two-year-old racing had its origin in a match between Mr. Hutchin- 

 son — the genius of Langton Wold in his day, as well as the breeder of 

 Hambletonian and trainer of Beningborough — and a Rev. Mr. Good- 

 ricke. In 1799 the first race of the kind was run at York, and won by 

 Mr. Robinson's Belle Fillie, the first favourite, Allspice, running last ; 

 and in the following year Lord Darlington won the maiden race of the 

 kind at Doncaster with the first of his two Muley Molochs. It was not 

 until eleven years later that Oiseau, by running away, at weights for 

 age over a mile and a half at Doncaster, from a four-year-old and a five- 

 year-old St. Leger winner, proved what good two-year-olds really can 

 do in the autumn. 



