110 PREPARATION, 
worse. Had the precaution been taken with Chavon to try 
him privately over a long distance before running him 
publicly ever a long course, he would, like ¥ester, have been 
one of the most valuable horses of his day ; for the two great 
handicaps at Newmarket, and many more, would have been 
entirely at the mercy of one or other of the two. 
It may well be asked, what was the cause of this astonish- 
ing change? Was it simply that a trial over a distance of 
ground was wanting to develop their merits? Was the 
previous bad running the result of illness or defective manage- 
ment? Or did time, and nothing else, work the wonderful 
change in the two? The facts are set forth, The reader may 
be left to form his own deductions as to the curicsities of 
in-and-out running, and the fallacy of form, as shown in 
public running, and occasionally in private trials. One thing 
I may say in support of my preference for light over big con- 
dition, which was manifest to every one who saw Charon at 
Doncaster. He was extremely light, and being a light- 
framed animal, his slender form looked most attenuated. Yet 
he was fit asa fiddle, and, in any other condition, probably 
would not have been so. 
As regards the system of training favoured by our Trans- 
atlantic cousins, it would not, if Mr. R. Ten Broeck’s be taken 
as an example, be a bad one with a little modification. So 
far as I can learn, his plan is to walk his horses many hours 
daily and gallop Jong distances slowly. The time devoted to 
walking I certainly think excessive, for as many as six or 
seven hours a day are spent in this way. Also in regard to 
the long distance gallops, four miles, which are done at a 
very slow pace till about the last half mile, when the speed 
is increased to its utmost stretch, I must add, with all 
respect to Mr. Prior, a most worthy man and excellent 
