OCTOBER, 1845. EMBELLISHMENTS. LAST SCENE OF ALL!"-ENGRAVED BY S. ALLEN, FROM A THE RETRIEVER.—ENGRAVED BY E. HACKER, FROM A PAINTING. BY J. BATEMAN. REMARKS UPON DOGS AND DOG-BREAKING ON THE GAME LAWS, SHOOTING, &c.-BY CECIL A NEW SONG TO AN OLD TUNE.-BY GELERT THE RED-DEER THE RETRIEVER THE WILD WOODCRAFT OF GERMANY.-BY CRAVEN. A CHAPTER ON YACHTING-THE COWES REGATTA, 1845.— THE TURF REGISTER: EAST SURREY-LUDLOW-WINCHES- - ING-WORCESTER-LANCASTER-SWANSEA-MANSFIELD GUILDFORD TENBURY STAMFORD LIVERPOOL (JULY MEETING)-DUDLEY-NEWTON— IPSWICH TEWKESBURY AND GLOUCESTERSHIRE (OVER THE TEWKESBURY COURSE) -WENLOCK-GOODWOOD 49-64 R 4 S Nottingham and Huddersfield F.s 5 30 3 6 51 Twentieth Sun. af. Trinity. 5 6M Lincoln and Amesbury Fairs. 7 T STAFFORD RACES. h. m. d. r 6 2N sets 1 44 2 1 s 5 35 1 5a43 2 18 2 36 r 6 6 2 6 14 2 54 3 11 r 6 9 4 7 36 4 4 4 22 8 WYORKSH.UN.HUNT. KNUTSFORDS 5 21 16 T NORTHALLERTON RACES. 19 Twenty-second Sun. af. Trin.r 6 33 18 s 4 47 23 morn. 7 41 8 16 r 6 4324 0 22 8 56 9 35 Twenty-third Sun. af. Trinity.'s 4 4325 1 28 10 10 10 48 27 M NEWMKT. HN. MEET. CAM. ST.r 6 4726 2 35 11 2011 46 28 T St. Simon and St. Jude. [DAYS 4 3927 3 44 29 W Horncastle Fair. r 6 5028 - 0.10 allows Ebe. 30 T HORNBY CASTLE COURS. MEET. s 4 35 N 31 F All THE DONCASTER MEETING. BY CRAVEN. This is the epoch of turf improvement. Everywhere either racing has already been placed upon a better footing than it has whilom been, or arrangements have been made to carry out plans for its better encouragement and convenience. Goodwood has almost overleaped perfection, and fallen on the other side; Ascot has been put en grande tenue; so has Doncaster; so will Epsom in another season. The changes effected on the Doncaster course are indeed very admirable, their simplicity being not their least merit. A plain white paling now encloses the Grand, the Jockey Club, and the Stewards' Stands in one ample green lawn. Here there is space for the betting circle, for the horses to be saddled, and for the company to pass from one of these places of rendezvous to another without let or hindrance. Any one who remembers-and what racing man does not ?-the style of crowd that was to be penetrated formerly in an attempt to make this progress will estimate the value of the arrangement. Nothing can exceed the state of excellence to which the running-ground has been brought the sward is as smooth as velvet, with a substratum which a horse with blown-glass legs might gallop unscathed upon. And, moreover, I believe it is contemplated by the committee to do something which shall make the cup a betting race: what that something will be, it needs no conjuror to divine. At the season of the year in which it comes off it is almost too much to expect old horses can be found for it; and, with the feature for the last day, an event in which one animal is backed against the field, very probably with odds on him, what sort of speculation is there likely to be? The modern members of the ring were surely born to good luck : positively handicaps shower upon them. "Wanted, a few more hands in the betting line; any party with industry may make his fortune as a leg in a few years.” As usual, the eve of Doncaster races came on "heavily with clouds." Some very ticklish rumours were current a week or two previous, anent vast sums of money laid against favourite "cracks" and crack lots. A young gentleman, lately a matriculator of Oxford, was pointed at as standing to lose a little national debt, should Weatherbit win; but I understand he not only declared the sums wagered by him were not for himself, but that, so soon as the race should be over, he would make no secret of the party whose agent in the transaction he was. Well, this commission turned out a good one, and that instituted to lay against Forth's lot a still better, as the layers of the odds in that case had not even a trial of their nerves to undergo, not one of them coming to the starting, to say nothing of the winning, post. Nevertheless, the practical turfite will probably detect the influence of unlucky chance as having operated to the downfal of some wellorganized Leger hopes. Had Miss Sarah succumbed to Miss Elis in the Great Yorkshire Stakes, the betting would have assumed a very different aspect: friends then would have rallied round animals left destitute by that untoward event; and it's one thing to get on against a first favourite, and another to get money out of a nomination at seven or eight to one. If Fortune had not turned jilt at the eleventh hour, there was as pretty an oracle on the cards to be worked as any moderate professor of legerdemain might desire: but, as it fell out, the bubble burst at York, and probably there never was a darker issue at Doncaster than that which drew its thousands thither for the eventful seventeenth of September. In the list of certain starters the names appended to many of them were those of fine old English gentlemen, who still regard the course, and not the ring, as the legitimate arena on which to decide a race. Aud if there never appeared a nomination to a racing stake save such as gentlemen of one kingdom or another should subscribe to, well would it be for the turf and with all who affect it for its wholesome purposes. It is not so difficult to see the uses and abuses of anything, if people will look abroad without putting on the spectacles of prejudice. Many years ago I detected the turn which had taken place in the affairs of the once manly custom of British boxing. I was convinced the national prestige in its favour, as a fair and honourable means of settling those disputes which ever must arise between man and man, was being laid hold of by a clique of the refuse of human nature for their own base gain. It was obvious to me that pugilism was professed, for the sake of its wages, by the greatest vagabonds and cowards on the face of the earth, and that the prizering, instead of offering patterns of honour and manly courage, every day became more and more the arena of ruffianism and pusillanimity. That opinion I expressed freely in the pages of this work, and for so doing I was bitterly assailed by the advocates of prize-fighting, especially by one journal, long distinguished as its leading organ. believe all that was done was done in an honest spirit: to be sure, it might have been more courteously expressed, but bygones shall be bygones. On the 14th of last month the editor of that journala gentleman who for years has been a leader of the ring-was compelled, forced by the very shame of manhood, thus to speak of a system whose high bearing and noble tendencies he had ever held up to popular admiration and for popular support :-"The ring has ceased to be the arena of fair play and manly bearing; it is no longer the stage on which spectators can look in the hope of witnessing examples of courage and humanity, combined with science, under honest and impartial superintendence, and hence it must cease to obtain the sympathies of those who value the true character of Englishmen." Hear also the opinion of another sporting journal, whose representative I hope I may call my friend, speaking of the occasion which called forth the foregoing observations :-"The scene all round the ring disgraced humanity. There were on the ground many that had never seen a fight before; can it be supposed they will ever witness one again? Some military men, who had travelled many miles to see the battle, justly said How can gentlemen be expected to endure a scene like this? for ourselves, we shall be ashamed to own that we witnessed it.' How men of mind and education can tolerate, not to say advocate, a system so carried out, is to us a mystery! The mere necessity of submitting to have your ears assailed by the unimaginable, and assuredly indescribable, language of the assembled ruffians is pollution. Anything so horribly disgusting as the affair, from first to last, we never witnessed or conceived. A gentleman cannot witness a prizefight without endangering his person and damaging his reputation; and the sooner such displays of lawless ruthianism are utterly abolished the better for the character of Englishmen, and for the morals of the nation." Thus, within three or four years of the time when I wrote that pugilism had ceased to hold up an example to the chivalry of the lower classes, it has come to be spoken of by its especial champion; while a journal which, though never the professed advocate of prizefighting, stands foremost in the spirit with which it deals with all our manly sports and exercises, has proclaimed its firm conviction to be, that a prize-fight is no criterion of courage at all, and that the conduct of a great portion of those who attend it would disgrace savages. for Shall I be asked with what view these observations are introduced? -how and what inference I design should be drawn from them? I answer, to give force to the assertion, that I believe, in its degree, the betting-ring will presently come to the odour at which the prize-ring has already arrived. It is as offensive to our national character to tell an English gentleman he needs the assistance and association of leg-ism to urge his countenance and patronage of a noble national sport, as it was a lying declaration that the peasantry of Great Britain required the exhibitions of hired pugilists to teach them fair play, and incite them to honourable manliness. I care not what abuse this may expose me to; neither for the hornet's nest it shall bring about my ears. I believe the turf to be a wholesome amusement, and one, many reasons, nationally useful withal, and therefore I would see it prosper. I believe the system of professional betting cannot work it good, but rather that it does it evil, and therefore I would see it discountenanced. As an instance out of many I could bring forward, I quote one to show that the hunger for betting, in those who make it a business, is an appetite so gross as to be careless of what it feeds on. Very praiseworthy efforts have been made during the last year or two to rid the turf of its mauvais sujets by warning persons convicted of racing frauds off the heath of Newmarket, and from admission to the principal stands and courses in the kingdom. Parties so found guilty of racing frauds, however, are not held unfit for the purposes of the speculators in the odds. Men who were recently detected in very nefarious proceedings in relation to horseracing, though they could not show in the ring, were publicly wagered with by members of it at Doncaster, and treated otherwise as if no such stigma rested upon them. The "auri sacra fames" was at the bottom of this: "get money as you can" is the motto of the ring so it was of the swash-bucklers of the last century; but it |