A GROWING EVIL AND ITS REMEDY. 275 
boys, I think no more need be said to prove on my part that 
the sooner the scale of weights is raised the better. 
I must confess that I am not a great admirer of the 
Education Act in its application to the youths intended for 
the racing business. It prevents them being taught anything 
. but their school lessons until they are too old to be taught 
riding as children; and the probability is, that when they 
come forward to ride in public, they will year by year know 
less and less of the rudiments of the art. This, in itself, is 
an additional reason, were one needed, for having boys of a 
_ certain weight, or men, as jockeys. I fear, too, that the in- 
fluence of the Act in the stable will be to still further elevate 
the ideas of both men and boys already too prone to think 
themselves above their work. 
Before finally leaving the subject, it may be well to point 
out a most pernicious practice that has lately sprung up in 
connection with the light-weight system. I refer to the 
galloping from the saddling paddock, harum-scarum, like so 
many wild Indians, up hill and down dale, over uneven ground 
wet or dry, to obtain a supposed preference in the choice of 
the side from which to start. As a consequence, older 
jockeys, who, properly consulting their employers’ interests, 
go steadily to the post, are, at the instance of these boys, 
made on their arrival to take what place they can find—a 
practice unfair, and which cannot be too strongly deprecated. 
Owners, unable to restrain these impetuous youths, suffer by 
having their horses broken down. But the stewards, if in- 
formed of the practice, which is a nuisance both intolerable 
and dangerous, might put an effective stop to it by fining 
every jockey who should be first at the post more than once 
on the same day, and by suspending him for a repetition of 
the offence. 
T 2 
