EMBELLISHMENTS. THE STAG AND HOUNDS." (WITH TWO ILLUSTRATIONS.) THE STAG, AFTER ALKEN; AND THE HOUNDS, BY R. B. DAVIS, LORD REDESDALE'S HOUNDS.-BY A MEMBER OF THE HEY EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF A NAVAL OFFICER 66 THE STAG AND HOUNDS."-BY CASTOR 160 164 A PEEP AT THE PROVINCES; OR, THE CRACK PACKS OF SPORTING INCIDENTS AT HOME AND ABROAD (FROM THE MS. CLOSE 167 173 OF THE GROUSE SEASON, AND A FEW WORDS ON THE STAGE OF LIFE; INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS; AND TRA- 181 186 193 S. E. R. P. S. E. . PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS OF THE METROPOLIS MEETING · THE TURF Register, 1847. CHESTERFIELD-WALSALL -LINCOLN-STAFFORD-MON ROYAL CALEDONIAN MEETING-YORKSHIRE UNION HUNT-CHESTER AUTUMN NORTHALLERTON h. m. d. h. m. h. m. h. m. Morning. 1W St.Babid.-LIVERPOOL ST.-CH. r 6 47 25 RISES 10 10 10 50 2T WATERLOO COURSING MEETINGS 5 4026 4 4211 3 F 4S WESTON (HEREFORD) COURS. M. s 5 4428 5 54 Quinquagesima Sunday, 5 30 r 6 4227 5 20 0 5 0 35 1 0 1 25 r 6 38 N SETS. 1 50 2 10 afternoon 6 M Albrighton Fair. s 5 47 1 7 20 2 30 2 50 7 T Shrove Tuesday.-COVENTRY R.r 6 33 8 W Ash Wednesday.-DRIFFIELDS 5 51 9 T RIDGWAY COURS. M. [ST.-CH. r 6 29 10 F DONCASTER GRAND NATIONAL S 5 54 11 S [STEEPLE-CHASE. r 6 25 s 6 19 Second Sunday in Lent. 20 M r 6 afternoon. 11 12 5 0 0 30 0 55 813 5 26 1 15 1 40 614 RISES 2 02 20 s 6 11 15 7 4 2 35 2 50 12 First Sunday in Lent. 13 M 14 TUFFINGTON COURS. M.-WAR-S 6 19 3 15 9 15 9 55 15 W ISLE OF AXHOLME ST.-CHASES. r 6 16 T WEST OF SCOTLAND ST.-CHASES. S 6 17 F BIRMINGHAM STEEPLE-CHASES. r 6 18 S St. Patrick's Day. 1510 3 5610 4011 20 411 4 3011 58 s 5 58 7 1 31 6 55 7 20 Morning s 6 1819 11 10 5 10 5 25 75 40 6 01 1 6 20 6 40 1 49 7 5 7 30 2 34 8 5 8 50 r 5 44 24 s 6 28 25 r 5 3926 3 14 9 30 10 10 3 49 10 5511 30 STEEPLE-CHASES IN MARCH. 1 Kilrue 8 Grand Military (Leamington) 10 Weatherby. 15 Irish Metropolitan 15 Windsor 16 Lincoln... 16 Pontypool...... ... 17 Leominster, Knaresborough, and others for this month not fixed. COURSING MEETINGS IN MARCH. Waterloo (Liverpool), 2; Weston (Hereford), 4: Biggar 7, 8, 9, 10; Morpeth (Oyle), 8, 9; Lytham (Finish), 8, 9; Ridgway and Union, 9, 10; Uffington (Salop) 14; Spiddal,14, 15; Malleny, 17, 18. RACES IN MARCH. Coventry, 7; Warwick, 14; Bibury, 22; Northampton, 29. THE GREAT SPRING HANDICAPS. BY CRAVEN. "Heaven knows my heart is bent to favour thee- ture to assume. -DRYDEN. Whether the popularity of handicap racing still progresses as it has been doing during latter years, is a problem on which the coming season may perhaps throw some light-or shade: that the practice, considered with reference to its professional details, is not improving, one may venFor the Newmarket event of that ilk there were ninety-six nominations, whereof little more than one-fourth accepted, twenty-five only being left in; perhaps a dozen may come to the post. Surely this will not show such a result as might have been expected from the premises. Last year the weights for the spring handicaps provoked a great deal of discussion, and suffered considerable animadversion. Premier, a very moderate four-year-old, had 8st. 8lb. awarded him for the Great Metropolitan Stakes, and his friends, in their pity, exclaimed "Thou art no Atlas, for so great a weight." We take it for granted that all the mistakes of handicappers are made in the purest spirit of equity; but that does not, on its merits, absolve them of responsibility. My physician may give me morphia instead of magnesia, and poison me with the best intentions in the world; but that would not be a good plea in an indictment for manslaughter. The law requires that he should have a knowledge of the Pharmacopoeia before he commences business. Your handicapper is an anonymous professor of a very accountable craft. He may be a rogue or an honest man, just as it fits his convenience or his conscience: no one's the wiser as to whom the mischief has been done by; consequently, in accordance with the logic of conventionalism, no wrong whatever has been done, because the only substantive crime, the sole malum in se, is being found out. In charity, we must hope that the manufacturer of more than one of the great spring handicaps was eminently ignorant of what he took in hand-unless, indeed, it is more honourable to be a knave than a fool. Now that the acceptances have been declared, and that these specimens of scientific adaptation have been launched on their voyages (in search of the golden fleece), it can do no harm, and may do some good, to place them in their habit as they first appeared in the Racing Calendar, cheek by jowl, for the sake of comparison-of course, in an epitomized form. The best way to do this will be to select such nominations as have been, as well as those that are, in the market, showing how the handicappers estimated them, and what the public thought and think of their value. To accomplish this, I venture to make free with a comparative table of the weights for the five great events, given by a weekly sporting contemporary, whose courtesy is the only plea I can urge in mitigation of the liberty: Before the weights were out, many nominations were in the Chester Cup betting, that subsequently retired, as Cawroush, Cossack,! Conyngham, and the like; and Mendicant, omitted in the [foregoing list, was backed for it at 50 to 1. The acceptances are, of course, favourable samples of the weights, which in many cases vary from one stone to two, between the same animals for different events. Of these discrepancies the following are a few instances:-Fergus is handicapped at 8st. 6lbs. for the Somersetshire Stakes, and 6st. 12lbs. for the Chester Cup; Antler's weights are 8st. 6lbs. for the Newmarket Handicap, and 6st. 12lbs. for the Chester; Clumsy is apportioned 8st. 4lbs. at Newmarket, and 6st. 6lbs. at Chester. For the Great Metropolitan Stakes they have put 8st. 7lbs. on Jonathan Wild, and for the Chester Cup 6st. 12lbs. These are cases applicable to the principle of handicapping, without risk or responsibility, supported by others which show a perfectly miraculous sympathy between the agents for weighting the various events, compared with the instances quoted. I am well pleased to see that the subject of anonymous handicapping has been taken up by several of the writers upon turf affairs. I have always objected to the handicap-formerly, perhaps, with more obstinacy than I am now disposed to maintain; but, if we are to have it, let us have it in as unobjectionable a form as may be. Nothing can be more simple, as I suggested a long time ago. An infinitesimal per centage, charged on all stakes of that character, would supply funds for the salaries of three competent persons, who might act independent of each other in certain districts, and as a quorum when any knotty question shall arise. They should be as well known to all concerned in the turf as the Messrs. Weatherby, the racing stakes' holders, or Mr. Clark, the racing judge. They should be held as accountable as any of those functionaries; and, my head for it, no man, with two or three hundred a-year to keep his eyes open, will ever fall into such a mistake as to put 8st. 61b. upon an animal not considered good enough to accept at 6st. 12lb. I have said I do not look so uncompromisingly upon handicap races as I did not that I like the contrivance more, but that I feel the chance of escape from it less. What is to be hoped from a moderate threeyear-old? and, once pass'd that age, what is to be done with a racer of any kind? A gentleman of acknowledged experience in all that relates to equestrian policy, who very recently treated the subject to which this paper is devoted, in the columns of a weekly contemporary, has the following very pertinent observations on the question I have here raised. I offer no apology to the reader for the quotation; for, in making it, I am doing him better service than by giving any opinion of my own. I offer no excuse for the appropriation to the writer, as I know the supposition that I thought such a course necessary would offend his courtesy. "Having considered the handicaps, we ought, per contra, to look at the principal weight for age races which remain to us, as the rewards due to the owner of a superior race-horse, whose prowess at three years old shall have disqualified him from any expectancy of being fairly, much less favourably, weighted for any of the great handicaps; and, unless the owner of such a horse shall have the good luck to have entered him when a yearling for the great Four Years Old Stake, at Goodwood, of 300 sovs. each, in which, for instance, the winners of the Derby and St. Leger of last year will have, this season, to meet and settle their differences,' there is little for him left beyond the Ascot Cup, and a minor event or two of the same kind, unless it be the Queen's Plates, which therefore act as premiums for the encouragement of the breed of horses at the present time, as forcibly as they did, and were intended to do, at the period of their institution." Here, however, I must take leave to oin issue with him. The chances |