COWARDLY RACEHORSES.

Press, Volume XLV, Issue 7158, 20 September 1888, Page 6

COWARDLY RACEHORSES.

The following note by "Rapier" is as applicable to Australian and New Zealand racehorses as to those running in England, " The number of horses now on the Tu_-f that run in cowardly fashion is very large, in all likelihood comparatively much larger than formerly. I was asking Tom Cannon the other day for his experience of the matter, and also for an explanation, and he suggests a very simple and probable cause. 1 here is much more racing than there was formerly, horses run oftener, they are consequently tried oftener, and the result is that they get sick of racing. They know, in most cases, what a finish means—very likely a dig with the spur if it is a close thing, at the lightest two or three smart cuts with the whip—the old butcher boy flogging jockey is not common in England, though he is nearly the rule in France—and almost Invariably a more or less desperate and distressing effort. Who can doubt many of them know also that if they do not get too near to the head of affairs, but take it quietly and stay with the ruck, the finish will be much easier - very likely tbe jockey will only ride them with his bauds, at any rate if he takes op his whip and there is no response, in many cases he will give it up as a bad job? Horses, as a rule, know so much about racing that they are apt to decline to race.

Ihe extremely novel sigh . of a cow acting as foster-mother to a Soal may be seen at Kirbymoorside. Mr John Wrightson, farmer, of that place, recently bad the misfortune to lose a valuable brood mare after foaling. The equine youngster, however, ia progressing, favorably, deriving its nourishment from a cow. Many persons have been to see the curious sight of the foal aad its attentive foster moth—i