Related article: 44 BAILY S MAGAZINE. [JANUAIY similar occasion in the year, and the comfortable house-party feel- ing seems to pervade the whole assembly. And yet a common experience of racing at Derby is shivering on those said stands, what time prodigious fields of horses are being got away. The Derby Au- tumn Meeting and large fields are synonymous terms, and this year the reputation was kept up in an amazing manner. The long en- forced abstention on the part of so many horses owing to the pro- tracted drought, was no doubt an actively operative factor. In seven of the eighteen races de- cided in the three days the starters were twenty or more, and on the third day the astonishing record was established of eighty- seven horses ruiining in the first four races, twenty-six starting in the Osmaston Nursery, the day*s total being 103. In all well over six hundred horses were handi- capped by Mr. Mainwaring. The race for the Derby Cup resulted in one of the best handi- cap performances of the year, if it was not the very best of them, though it is difficult to set aside the magnificent running of Fosco in the Stewards' Plate at Liver- pool. But more credit is natur- ally attached to a race of a mile than to one of six furlongs ; and though the Derby mile is not one of the severe order, it was over this distance that Eager ran the race of his four-year-old career. That he did not win was not the fault of the handicapper, whose duty it is to bring the horses entered as closely together as pos- sible ; and this end may surely be regarded as having been accom- plished when the bottom weight beats the top weight by a head, with a mid-weight horse third, beaten half-a-length. The fault lies with the system under which nearly every important handicap is framed, and it cannot be too strongly or too often insisted that ' a system under which a capable horse and a previous winner can be set to receive 39 lbs. from one of the same age. This was the difference between the weights of Eager and Waterhen ; and I make bold to maintain that a horse that requires such an allow- ance as that from one of his own age does not deserve to win a big handicap. Buy Bupron Sr Eager had been coming on all the year, and at Doncaster did a big thing in the Portland Plate ; but this was a bigger thing still, and Morning- ton Cannon never rode a better race. He was giving 12 lbs. to Knight of the Thistle, 14 lbs. to Dieudonne, 22 lbs. to Golden Bridge, and 29 lbs. to Minstrel (of his own age), and they stood no chance whatever with him. Eager is as handsome a horse as there is now in training, and I am glad to hear that Adrian Jones has been commissioned to make a model of him, as he has already done in the case of Per- simmon, Cloister, Why Not, The Soarer, and others. The same artist i§ to paint Eager ; but give me the model for perpetuating the points of a horse. Since Amurath unexpectedly succumbed to Galopin Lassie in the Windsor Castle Stakes at Ascot, he had been on the shelf, so far as public appearances were concerned. He re-appeared in the Osmaston Nursery Handicap, and probably reproduced his Brocklesby Stakes form, for he was Bupron Sr Tablets a meritorious second (this was the field of twenty-seven) to Strike-a- Light, to whom he was giving lolbs., and beat La Uru- guaya, who was receiving i4lbs., by a neck. It is so rarely that the Brocklesby form comes to any- thing that this year presents quite i«99.] "OUR VAN. (» 45 a prominent exception, four of the first half-dozen in the Lincoln race having done well, though it is unreasonable to hope that horses got ready so early in the year can be of the stamp to last. As regards the beating which Amurath gave La Uruguaya, one would like to see this smart filly run a race or two with one of our best English jockeys up. In the Chesterfield Nursery Handicap of five furlongs, two furlongs less than the Osmaston Nursery, Trident gave La Uruguaya gibs., and less than a length beating ; and Tri- dent looks like a wear-and-tear customer. He was judiciously eased in the early autumn, and came out looking wonderfully fresh and well. Fosco, St. Bris, and Trident, are three which should do something more for Mr. Leopold de Rothschild when the season of 1899 comes round. Warwick NoYember Meeting. — Last year this meeting, never remarkable for its racing, was accentuated by a visitation of fog, which necessitated the holding of as many as nine races on the second day. This year the feature was the size of the fields — and it is not the best course in the world for such conditions. The entries for the selling races were largely influenced by a desire to sell un- remunerative stock, and the auctioneer was kept very busy between races. The only race of interest, the November Handicap, saw the re-appearance of Soliman, who put a stop to the series of successes of Sherburn, and ran in something like his old form. Manohester Novembep Meet- ing. — The snow which fell on the last day of Warwick boded ill for Manchester, but the weather there was good — for Manchester. No one expects to see much of the racing, people being satisfied to stare at the fog, out of which shadowy forms emerge a quarter of a mile or less from home ; these proving to be the horses. There is not much here for the *' field stewards" to do. "Field stewards" are energetic professional backers, who station themselves at various portions of the course to witness what takes place during the pro- gress of a race, the knowledge thus gained being utilised on sub- sequent occasions. What they see or expect to see is hidden from the average race-goer, but that they occasionally see some- thing may be assumed or they would not continue the practice. And these men make a living out of little else than keen observation and quick wit. At Newmarket a favourite coign for the ** field