NOTES AND COMMENTS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 54, 1 September 1913, Page 2

NOTES AND COMMENTS

(By Sir Bedivere.) Acceptances for all events to be decided at the Dannevirke Spring Meeting are due to-morrow. It is said that The Native is to be shipped to Sydney on Friday, and that he will go into F. M'Grath's stable. A copy of the Presidential Address delivered at the annual meeting of the New Zealand Trotting Association on 27th August, has reached us from the courtesy of the association's secretary, Mr. J. H. Morris. It is a bulky document and space will not permit moro than passing reference thereto. The total amount of stakes given by trotting clubs during the past season amounted, it appears, to nearly £50,000 or £7000 more than during the previous year There were 2295 licenses issued during the season, and generally speaking, the conduct of those holding them seems to have Keen satisfactory. Refistration had been granted to the Waiato, Poverty' Bay, and Southland Trotting Clubs. Mr. Selig d,ealt with some difficulties arising out of the reciprocal arrangements with New South Wales clubs, and went on to appeal strongly for the initiation of class trotting. In support of this form of sport Mr. Selig instanced the great success of the "Exhibition Trotting Race" contested before the officers and crew of H.M.S. New Zealand. The President touched lightly on the starting, handicapping, and amateur rider and driver questions and concluded with BOrne eulogistic references to the work done for trotting by Mr. William Garrard. It is safe to say that Bobrikoff will not contest the New Zealand Cup. Five of the yearlings sold at the Newmarket July sales were bred by W. A. Higgs, the well-known jockey, who had only just time to leave* the saJe paddocks to weigh out for Normandy Boy in the first race. The five made 2535gn5, Lord Derby paying 1200gns for a son of his own horse, Chaucer, and J. H. Batho, acting presumably for Mr. S. B. Joel, giving 600gns for the son of Polymelug. A week before the Derby was run a Durban paper touched on the prospects as follows: — "The three crack two-year-olds of last season, Craganour, Shogun^ and Waiontha, have not turned out as they were expected to so far, aod it only needs, a 100 to 1 outsider to run second for the Derby, object to the winner, the favourite, and get the race, to put the cap on the lot." Albeit Aboyeur's name is* not mentioned, the scribe responsible for this par has surely gone near the limit in turf prohecy. Deutscher Sporfc (Berlin) states that F. Bullock, the well-known Graditz jockey, terminates his engagement with that stable at the end of the current season, and that next year he will be riding for the stable of Reginald Day at Newmarket. Bullock became first jockey to the Graditz Stud when Day succeeded R. Waugh as trainer, and is apparently anxious to rejoin Day in England. The authorities in Germany have recently had their attention directed to the great volume of illicit bedting that goes on, and the impossibility of successfully coping with it. In order to remedy the position the percentage retained from betting un the totalisator is to be reduced from 16 2-3 to 12 per cent., and bookmakers are again to be licensed. The number licensed in any town will be proportionate to the population, and licensees will only be permitted to do business on events decided elsewhere than in Germany. It will at, least be interesting to note results of such regulations, but in the meantime one may beg leave to doubt whether (1) unlicensed men will automatically cease to "lay 'em," and (2) whether licensed men will scrupulously refrain from betting on races decided in their own country. Students of pedigree will be interested to learn that England's crack two-year-old The Tetrarch is quite an extraordi-narily-bred colt. He is by a No. 1 horse Roi Herode from a No. 2 mare, in Vahren, and of the 32 families represented in the first five removes no less than 27 are of either sire or running numbers. No sire number occurs in the first three removes in which No. 1 comes in three times, No. 2 twice, and No. 4 * twice. This is running blood close-up with a vehgeance There is no St., Simon blood in the colts' make-up, which is in itself strange in these days, but he inherits one strain of Galopin, and two of Speculum. His dam Vahren, who was foaled as long ago as 1897, had no foal to live during her first five seasons at the stud, during which period she had dead twins by Fortunio in two successive years. In 1908, however, came Nicola, by Symington, who at her first appearance in public carried off the Stud Produce Stakes at the Sandown Spring Meeting of 1910, beating St. Nat, Black Potts, and a big field. She nevei ran again that year, and subsequently lost her form. Vahrett's next foal, Coupe dOr, by John o' Gaunt, ran five times as a juvenile without winning, and her foal of -'4910 was Coh'gny (by John o' Gaunt or Symington), who made his first appearance last July in the Princess of Wales's Stakes, in which he shaped moderately. In January last Vahren produced a filly to Symington. The Otaki Maori Racing Club must bo well pleased with the .entry received on Saturday for the Spring Meeting, for it is one of quality as well as quantity. Los Angelos, Undecided, Mira, Peroneal, Peronilla, Makara, Diavolo, Byron and Parky are among the horses engaged. It will be noticed that the distance of each of the hack hurdle events to be decided at Otaki this month is "one mile and 980 yards. These races used to be run over a mile and a half course, but the start for the same was far too close to the first hurdle, the position of which could not well be altered. The stewards decided, therefore, to add one hundred yards! to the length of these races. Riders will much appreciate the change, which will do away with thb dangerous scrambles for positions tliat . used to occur immediately tho field left the barrier. The following interesting bit of history concerning the Pakuranga Hunt is clipped from tho "Sporting and Dramatic Review" :— Some 40 years ago Sir George Grey imported to Auckland the

first hounds, and sold them to Mr. M'Laughlan, and those, though beagles, and small ones at that, wore used by him at Pulii Nui to hunt rabbits. Tho sight of these beagles seems to have aroused the sporting instinct in some of the residents, who longed to hear again the music of the pack. As a result a meeting was held in Mr. Alfred Buckland g office, and it was resolved to form the Pakuranga Hunt Club. Three couples of hounds were imported from Australia, and with these a start was made on those very fields in Pakuranga where previously, with the per-, mission of the Auckland Acclimatisation (society, hares had been liberated. With this small start the club went on improving year by year, until to-day tho Pakuranga Hunt is one (if not the largest) of hunt clubs in New Zealand.