MISCELLANEA. 
059 
When a race-horse is in the fullest exercise of his power, and 
doing his best, the blow of a whip will sometimes make him 
wince and shrink : he will, as it were, tuck up his flanks to 
escape from the blow, and raising his legs higher, lose ground, 
instead of stretching his legs forth over a larger surface. In 
this way considerable space may be lost, when nothing is want¬ 
ing but a quiet steady hand, and a forbearance from the use of 
the whip. A curious example of this occurred a few years ago 
at Doncaster, in the celebrated race between Matilda and Ma¬ 
meluke. The latter was of a hot and violent temper; and being; 
irritated by several false starts, not only lost considerable ground, 
but a great deal of his strength at the outset of the race. Ro¬ 
binson was riding Matilda, and saw Chifney on Mameluke 
passing every horse in succession till he came up with Matilda. 
At that moment he calculated Mameluke’s strength with such 
nicetv, that he was convinced he could not maintain the effort 
he was then making. He permitted Chifney, therefore, to reach 
him, and even be a little a-head of him; and so far from whipping 
Matilda, actually gave her a kind of check. That check, that 
slightest imaginable pull, strengthened Matilda, and by assisting 
her to draw her breath, enabled her to give those tremendous 
springs, by which she recovered her ground, headed Mameluke, 
and won the race for her owner, Mr. Petrie. It was in this race 
that a Scotch gentleman, who had won £17,000 by the issue, 
went up to Robinson in the joy of the moment, and gave him 
£1000 as a present. Gully, the owner of Mameluke, is said to 
have lost £40,000 on the occasion.— Weekly Despatch . 
The Farrier’s Boy and the De’il. 
Mr. A iton, in his Survery of Ayrshire, relates a ludicrous 
story of the service rendered to the burgh of Prestwick by a 
sprig of farriery, in disabusing the inhabitants of some strange 
superstitions, to which they had given credence. About the end of 
the 17th or beginning of the 18th century, one of the magistrates 
of Prestwick committed to prison a boy who had been guilty of a 
depredation on the peas of one of the barons of that burgh. David 
Rankin (afterwards smith in Kilmarnock), then apprentice to the 
baillie, and who had also made free with the peas, found means to 
steal the key of the prison, from under his master’s pillow, and to 
liberate his companion. Observing a bull-stirk at hand, he in¬ 
carcerated him, locked the door, and deposited the key where he 
had found it. Next day, about ten o’clock (the hour of cause), 
when the magistracy and barons of the burgh were convened, to 
sit in judgment on the boy, instead of him, they found in prison 
a bull roaring for the want of food ; and from their ignorance of 
the trick that had been practised, and the superstition of the 
