Sporting Review AND WEEKLY STANDARD. Thursday, January 3, 1895.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume V, Issue 232, 3 January 1895, Page 4

Sporting Review AND WEEKLY STANDARD. Thursday, January 3, 1895.

Once again the Christmas racing carnival has passed over our heads and the yearling sales have as usual been sandwiched be tween the race days, with the exception of the Wellington Park lot, which is always submitted the day after the last chapter of the Ellerslie sermon has been read. Looking back at the result of the annual offerings of thoroughbred stock, it cannot be said that big prices have been a feature of the market. Quite the contrary. The various sales have taught two lessons. The first is that the Auckland market is either not properly attuned in the matter of appreciating standard bred trotters, or the stock bought at the 1893-94 sales has not panned out satisfactorily ; and the second lesson is that the days when thousands could be obtained for youngsters have passed away. Good sound prices will always' be realised, but the top-sawyer bids of a thousand and over appear to have vanished. Of course the tightness of the money market may have brought about the reduced prices, but we are inclined to think that racing men are not so willing to put thousands into the yearling lucky-bag and trust to Providence —and lines of breeding—to give them an appreciable return for their money. The explanation of much of the shrinkage noticeable in our market lies in the fact that breeding racing stock is overdone all over the colonv- Owners on the Australian side and down South arebreedingthemselves, and therefore find no necessity to visit our annual market to replenish their stables. At the leading dispersal—the Wellington Park sale—the purchasing contingent did not include a single foreign buyer ; and though we are glad in one way to see the aristocrats of Mr Morrin’s stud farm remain

here to enrich the local turf, the ugly fact remains that our breeders cannot afford to have Australian racing men absent from their sales. Limit our output operations to New Zealand, and where will the stud masters of the North Island be? The plain fact is there are too many breeders in the Island, and it is certain that some of them will have to drop out of the business. Those who remain will find it to their interest not to gather a big collection of mares around them, but to pick out only the very best of their mares, no matter if they reduce the number of their matrons by one-half.