PERFORMANCES OF MODERN HORSES 239 
the opposite ; Plydug Childers beating Chanter, 10 stone each, 
6 miles. I have seen matches run at Newmarket over the 
yearling course, 2 furlongs and 52 yards. Now we seldom 
run over two miles, or less than five furlongs, with horses 
older than two years old ; anything under the latter distance 
being proscribed by the rules of the Jockey Club. 
Races in those days were run for in heats, a custom long 
- since abandoned ; and nowadays, as has been said, shorter 
courses are substituted for those of four miles, except in a 
very few instances. Fortunately a morbid desire no longer 
exists to witness such cruel feats of endurance as the one 
which took place over the old course at Stockbridge between 
Camerton, Shoe String, Office Dyke, and Scorpion, when the 
last named died on the course, Shoe String ran herself blind, 
and the other two were never afterwards good for anything. 
There is a great contrast, too, in the number of times that 
a horse will run in the present day, as compared with the 
past. To-day a horse is raced ten times as often as in 
the old times ; for we find that in 1750, only one horse in ten 
was raced a second time. What would Lord Portman and 
his contemporaries of that year, who were content to run 
each horse but once, or at the utmost twice a year, think of 
the performances of /zsherman and other horses of recent 
times! Fisherman ran in one year, thirty-five times, and 
secured twenty-one victories, amongst them the Ascot Cup, 
two miles and a half, and immediately afterwards on the 
same day, the Queen’s Plate about three miles; and it does 
not appear that these or his other numerous races did him the 
slightest harm. This feat, it should be remembered, was 
much more trying than to run heats in which the same horses 
only are met again and again. Jso/ine accomplished a similar 
task at Goodwood. These were good horses, if not like 
