TROTTING CLUB PERMITS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume VII, Issue 319, 3 September 1896, Page 8

TROTTING CLUB PERMITS.

We should like to see the Trotting Clubs have the same number of permits as they had in 1893-94, with an additional fifteen or twenty permits to meet the require-

ments of trotting clubs which have been formed in the populated districts during the past few years. Apart from other considerotions, we maintain that the encouragement of trotting races has done more than all the agricultural societies could have expected to achieve in the way of improving the breed of hackney horses, such as the roadster and harness horse. Take, for example, the Canterbury province, more especially about Christchurch, where trotting has been in vogue for many years, and the improvement in style and pace of the harness horse is decidedly noticeable. We can remember when there were few horses in Canterbury that could boast of any acceptable" action or pace, and that is not many years ago. And it is for the sole purpose of encouraging this useful breed of horses —the Yankee trotter — that we urge the claims of the trotting

clubs to a larger number of permits. At present there is hardly sufficient meetings held within reasonable distance of each other to encourage owners of trottingbred horses to pace them. At election time the Trotting Clubs should make it their business to sound each of the members seeking election, and obtain from them, if possible, a written statement as to whether they are in favour of an increase in totalisator permits in newlypopulated districts.