SPORTING NOTES.

The Victoria Earing Club paid away £46,068 fe stakes last season- , TJp-to-Date ran badly -m the TJhipn* BteephdMse at Caulfield last month. Nadador is strongly fancied foT the Grand I?*tiona.l Steeplechase -by more than one •hxewd judge. * ' ■• ' • ■ ■ Ability was scratched for all engagements «t the Grand National Meeting at 2.45 p.m. {•n Wednesday. „„ „ F. Jones rode the~two-year-o d filly Santoss* to victory in the HoHybush Selling Blate ct G*twick in June. Doubl« «vent betting on the leading Australian spring handicap* is moro -tuAive than las been the cas* for some years. Splash, by Bloodshot, won a two-year-old iwSdicap VOauifield on. July 21. Katanga, a Bister io SiarsWt, finished third. Tfca Frauoa three-year-old Prestjge, who fcolds an unbeaten record, broke down bs<sr in June, and is not likely to race again. Next week's contest for the Grand an«tton&l Steeplechase is admitted to be one of the most open in the history of the race. H. Hales, who took Maniapoto to Sydney last 'year, is now training- a team of fifteen loTSfts in the southern part of 2s ew South Foresight, a three-year-old colt by Orbme, %«* among the winners at Ascot, Ramrod, •Ijso by Carbine, filled second placß m another race. . . , „ ' , Ihrma, a two-year-old winner at the Ascot meeting 1 , has a genuine colonial pedigree, her. •ire being Merman and her dam the Carbina m»e Dum Dum. ' _ Mr Stead's team, consisting of leolt, Porcelain Huascar and! Boniform, wil. foave tor Sydney by ihe Wimmera to-day, in charge of It. J. Mason. . , „ General Kuroki started favourite for the Hurdle Handicap at Warwick Farm las. ■notth, but finished^ out of a place. It js reported that he i 3 for #ale. , « i » Handel, at one time a member of Cl'arkas team at Bdccarton, was made favourite for a Trial Handicap at Sandow Park, Melbourne, but finished out of a. place. ' . . At the Hurst Paik meeting m June his Majesty the King won a good two-year-old xace with the filly Osella, by Orme-Ecila., fey Persimmons-Meadow Chat. A. proposal to provide for the payment of jockeys' fees at the scale was set down for discussion at the annual meeting ot the Queensland Turf Club last month. N James Scobie, the .Bal-lara* trainer, who w*s practically invincible a year or two ago,, is mow experiencing a long run 01 bad luck, »nd a win would come as a novel experience. Among the winners at a recent meeting at Wallsendi, New South Wales, was an imported fiUy named Fairwind, by Carbine— JrtJodwind, by Windfall, who is out of a balf»«ter to Musket, the sire of Carbine. The Ladas colt Troutbeck, who finished Maid in the Derby, won three rich Etakes for the Duke of Westminster in the space of ten da.ys in June, his victories being- gained j wi Htarat Park. Ascot and Sandown Paik. • In the British House of Common* tho Street Betting' Bill was read a second timo without a division. Mr Herbert G-lad^tone denied that the Bill was a sop to tho Nonconformist conscience, both Houses of ConTwoation having urged its adoption. If Starehoot, one of the recently-airived ITew Zealanders, is nothing else (says a Sydney paper), he is certainly a kickeT with some pretensions to "claes," as he clearly demonstrated at the start for the Eosehill Handiea.». "Wails- *h,eie he la&hed out viciously all xound, and was finally placed on the outside of his field. For ft long 1 tim» w» h*ve, not heard the ypoti J'dope" with any of its old-time resonance (says a N«w York paper), and there is little doubt that, when its use was at its height, there was a great deal of exaggeration, «nd hysteric hubble-bubble, which lilted space in -the paperß, and made small tqlk among the know-it-alls. ; * Ob© of the finest judges of a. horse who «{r«r visited' a racecourse or haras, the k.to CouM Lehndorff, always insisted upon horses jjwovinijr their prowess as racers. It w»s his i&6«yry that ascing was the c-nly way to bring «ot the best qualities of blood stock. Consequently he would not think of giving a high. Srice, even with unlimited funds from his Government to back Mm, umless the horse hmd proved his racing" quality. / I» ihe New South Wales Legislative AaBembly the Attorney-General introduced a Bill for *he regulation of gambling: and betting. Its provisions include a fine of £100 en anyone betting- in the streets or bettingi with ' »r soliciting bets • from anyone under twenty-one years of »ge. The Bill limits ."the number of racing days, and all rac» x»e«ftinff3 mUEifc be licensed. Besides horse

laciHg, the Biil deals with other sports, and the police arc given stummsiy powers. The- inventor of an improved totalisator met a decidedly unsympathetic subject in the Premier oi Victoria, when he waited on. that gentleman with a. suggestion that the Government might take up his machine and run it as a State monopoly at all race meetings. Mr Beat did not take kindly to the pioposal, and not only told- the inventor that ha personally would not have anything to do with gambling in *ny form* but also that it was useless asking th& Ministry to support Giiythiiig 1 . that -would; tend to increase the existing evil. From this it would appear as if there was very little chance of the totalisator being legalised in Victoria. Mr Girifßth3'a "Turf and Heath " tells us how Haiee's great rival in ihe sa'dd'ie, Mick O'Brien, eet off one Ana day with, his brother-in-law, the. iaiaoiis vraineT, Tim Hcywood, t-0 purchase Carbine fur 3000g*s, but their keen judgmenit told them Tradiikra vras the better of *h« two. So they bought him, but h» r«ver won a race. Had they bought Carbine they would have won 3D.OCOg«, acd than pocketed the. 13,000gs paid for him by the D^ko of Portland-; but it is only fair to add that ouite a number of experts of that tim« thought Tradition was pounds b©U«r than " bid J-ack." On top of this Mr Griffiths tells us that in '1884 there were sold in the one day at Melbourne, as yeariing3, Dunjop for 38ga, K«wstead : for 30gs, «-nd Sedition for 50g»; that is to say, th« -winners' of a Me*-

boon* Oup. a MwAjinont l Pl«te, and • Newmarket Handicap went for only 118gB th» lot! What a, fortun* was there for a really clever man who knew a racehorse inside and outside when h« savr one 1 . The following clipping from the J^don "Pink 'Un" lends itself to the id» ,that Sir James Duke must now heartily wish that such a man as Mr R. Sie-vier ha 4 never existed: "When Sir James Ditke ran third for the Derby of 1901 with Martenhurnt, and afterwards sold the colt for a very large sum, he was looked upon as being extremely lucky. Martenhurst proved to be ft bad horse. -Uick, however, was not aJwayj on the side of Sir James Duke, and, though he won the action of Sievier v. Duke, it in all probability cost him a Derby winner. Credit is generally give* to Sir Tatton Sykes for having bred Spearmint, bat as » matter of fact, tho honour belong* to Sir James Duke, who sent Maid of the Mint to Carbine and sold her m foal. A. lawsuit *nd a Tacing stud are costly things to carrr'on at the same time, and in otdet to maintain the one Sir James had to part with ihe othex Of the yaW at Carbine a* a sire Sir James Duke had already satisfied himself. ■ He had a maro cal'.ed Warble, by Skylark, and. Bending- her to Carbine, the result was Wargrave, who made a clean sweep of tho nurseries of his year. He was then sold to Mt John Brail Bottoml-ey, foT whom he won the Cesarewitch and many other racec The dam of Spearmint is haJfsister to Wargrave." Although Americans hold «. high, opinion of nearly everything- American 1 , the following 1 from the pen of " The Irresponsible One," in tho "Sports of the Times" (New York), suggests that many followers of racing are not exactly enraptured with the jockeys now riding in that country: "We have practically no 'riders' to-day. We have* few monkeys who can sii a hustling finish, who can handle a free-running horse, but who among them cap.- tame a- horse, can pluce a horse, and ' draw their whip' without letting iSie head down, without tensing 1 on* rein and loosing the other so- that the horses ' swerve under the whip.' aa some of the critics say, not knowing that the animal is swerving to the tense rein, and from the loose one. Let any prac/tdcal man go to the start and note the seat of the modern boys, who expect the word- ' go ' at any breath. Note how many ars sitting in easy chaws, how many have their horses in hand and ready for a start. Then Botfe when ihe- webbing- rises. There ia no getting a horse into his stride. It ia a mad' ■working of the hands back and forth, with no object, but a mad hustle on the part of the rider, as though he — and not the horse — were doing everything:. How many times have we seen a jookey. down the stretch, riding for dear life with his hands- in a- head finish, the hands tnovittg spasmodically, but tha rein 3so loose that his work is absolut-elv without effect on the horse's mouth, although the sides of the 33<*ck are bein? pleasantly tickled. If tho present method had made world-beating jockeys, where are. they? Not in this coimtry, England, or France !"