292 ON STEEPLE-CHASING. 



innovation when we remember how those 

 two most famous horses, Gaylad and 

 Lottery, both belonging to the same owner, 

 swept the board for years ; but it was 

 fatal to the improvement theory all the 

 same. 



For some reason or other the sport of 

 steeple-chasing has never taken the same 

 hold on the public that flat-racing has. 

 Sporting journalists love to allude to it as 

 the illegitimate game, though why racing 

 horses over a country should be considered 

 less " legitimate " than on the flat is a 

 thing not easy to understand. Possibly it 

 is because this sport has never been under 

 Jockey Club rules, being, as is generally 

 known, regulated by the National Hunt 

 Committee, a body, however respectably 

 comj)osed, with by no means the same 

 prestige and authority as are possessed by 

 the august corporation, which from the very 

 centre of horse-racing, Newmarket, directs 



