NOTES.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVI, Issue 942, 26 March 1908, Page 6

NOTES.

(By The Judge.) Yesterday Uhlando proved that his Wanganui Cup win was no fluke by carrying off the Taranaki Cup. The brown son of Uhlan and Revenant cut out the mile and a-quarter race in 2min 10 l-ssec, being followed home by Mahuta and Scotty. * * Ben Deeley has now ridden fiftyseven winners this season. He should finish the season very high up in the list of winning jockeys. * * * * All the work of late at Ellerslie has been done on the tan and inside grass track, the sand and grass tracks having been closed for a few days on account of a culvert being put in at the top bend. * * • * The Explosion gelding Explosive won a double at the Thames meeting. * * * * The new five-furlong starting-place at Ellerslie has been completed, but the track will hardly be settled enough to allow of racing for some little time yet. * * * * Mr. O’Connor is being kept busy. He is in charge of the starting barrier at the Taranaki meeting this week, and will get back just in time to catch the train at Penrose to do the starting at the South Auckland meeting, Hamilton. * » ♦ • One or two of the lightweights appear to be very well treated in the Easter Handicap, one especially. * * ♦ * Sonoma won the Mauku Cup from end to end. The daughter of Seaton Delaval has done a lot of racing without much luck, and no one will begrudge Mr. R. Thorpe the win. * * ,*- * * The New Zealander, Maranui, appears to be coming into form in Sydney. He won another race on Saturday, fairly running away with the Warwick Farm Pace Welter. » v * There are fifty-four entries for the Thompson Handicap. Among the Aucklanders engaged are Te Aroha, Soultline, Cambrian, Celtic, and Loongana. * * « * The Waiuku Racing Club had to contend with wretched weather for their meeting on Friday, this virtually spoiling the meeting. * * * * The Tasman gelding Tui won the Matamata Handicap from end to end, thereby partly making amends for his bad luck at the Thames, where his saddle slipped when making his run in the big race. He also annexed the Flying Handicap at the Matamata Meeting. The well-known Auckland horseman, Deeley, rode five winners in six starts at the Thames meeting on Saturday. * * * ♦ The Messrs. Duder have claimed the name La Reine for their yearling filly by Soult from Queen Anne. The youngster is a very racy-looking specimen of the thoroughbred. • 4 F. D. Jones rode four successive, winners on the second day of the Napier meeting, his mounts being Martyrium, North Pole, Oxton, and North Head, all of whom claim Birkenhead as their sire. « « » « Sweet Alice continues to pick up races at the country meetings. Her latest victory was in the Autumn Stakes at the Thames, in which the Soult mare beat five others very easily. * * * * The Napier Carnival Cup winner, Arc Light, is a brown mare belonging to Mr. Watts, who, by the way, won the race last year with Gazeley. Arc Light was got by Merriwee from Dazzle, by Hotchkiss from Radiant, by Robinson Crusoe from Radiance, by Fireworks. Arc Light is rather a happy effort at equine nomenclature. ❖ * * $ With so much rain during the last weeks, the training tracks at Ellerslie are very soft, and trainers are being hampered a good deal in getting their charges into racing form.

The Waipa Racing Club will hold a meeting on April 1. * * « « Belario, who won the Warrengate Cup, is a five-year-old bay gelding by The Officer from Sprite.

The Wellington Pony and Galloway meeting, fixed for last Saturday, had to be postponed on account of heavy rain. It will take place next Saturday. W. E. Pine, a . Southern lightweight, and the youngest of five brothers, who have all ridden winners, was . killed at the Waimate meeting. He was riding Nancy Stair, and when in the lead the filly swerved, causing the rider’s head to strike a post, and the injury proved fatal. <* * « * Boniform has been left in the North Island Challenge takes and St. Leger, so that it would appear he is training on all right. * » * • The Hon. J. D. Ormond’s colours were successful in no less than seven events at the Napier Carnival Meeting. * * a a The West Australian Turf Club is going in for a revised list of colours, and at their last meeting decided that 11 colours only will be allowed to be combined for racing, they being white, black, brown, blue, green, tartan, red, pink, orange, purple and lilac. Distinctions allowed will be sleeves, sashes, spots and hoops. The caps must be of the foundation colour, sashes and hoops four inches wide, and spots four inches in diameter. Similar conditions have been in vogue at the Sydney Associated Race Club meetings for 12 months. * * ' The South Australian Full Court, on a reserved point of law, recently decided that betting with a totalisator agent is an illegal contract under section 6 of the Gaming Act of 1897. The case arose out of h, claim in the local court for the recovery of £2O 7s 6d. winnings on investments by Alfred Henry Sumner, entrusted to Abraham Solomon as totalisator agent, who was to receive commission on any winnings which might result frm the transaction. ■* ■* - • The New Zealand horse Cuneiform has been sold to Mr. T. A. Briese, of Albury, for stud purposes. Cuneiform was a good performer over here, but proved very disappointing while racing recently in Victoria. 4c • * An Indian buyer has made an offer of 3000 guineas for the English horse Wuffy, which was refused. ♦ * • » The Grand National Steeplechase will be run over the Aintree Course, near Liverpool, to-morrow. Mr Daly has given Poseidon 9.11 in the Sydney Cup. This is 21b more than Carbine won with when he was four years old, but then the minimum was 6.0, and Carbine was giving 461 b to the four-year-old Mantilla, who ran second. Entries for the Winter Meeting of the Takapuna Jockey Club are due on Friday, April 24. * * » * The St. Leger gelding Scotty, who was thought to have a fine chance in the Taranaki Cup with 7st 101 b., was unable to get nearer than third. Uhlando, Bst. 21b., and Mahuta, Bst 61b., defeated him. There were nine runners. r * * » The Cyrenian gelding St. Cyren won the Waiuku Cup on Friday, but had virtually no opposition. Among the pictures now showing at His Majesty’s Theatre is one originally entitled “ The Ten Miles’ Steeplechase.” As there is no steeplechase run of that length, one becomes suspicious of a faked picture, and the remarkable number of falls shown helps out the supposition. It is, nevertheless, a splendid film, and should be seen by our racing men, who will also be interested in the picture showing the “ training of a trotter.” * * * • A very old jockey—he was in his 90th year—is just dead. This was William Dixon, of Newmarket, who rode The Ashstead Pet in the notorious Running Rein’s Derby of 1844, and in the same year he won the Colum Produce Stakes and the Palace Filly Stakes on Crinoline. The year previous—1843—he had won the Csarewitch Stakes with Mr. Townley’s Corranna. He was some time a trainer —for the late Lord Falmouth, among several owners —and of later years was custodian of Newmarket Heath.

The importation of English racehorses to this side of the water, says Mr. Wallace in “The Horse of America,” commenced about the year 1750. . . The following six animals were brought over within a year or two of that date: —Monkey, Traveller, Dabster, Childers, Badger and James. Of these Traveller was the great horse, james became the progenitor of a tribe of very fast quarter horses, and though he did not found that tribe, which had teen in existence for a hundred years on the border line between Virginia and North Carolina, he doubtless improved it. Monkey was twenty-two when he came, and did not live long. The whole number imported into all the American colonies before the War of Revolution (1775) counts up to about fifty, and some of these are practically unknown and a few were wholly fictitious There were not more than twenty mares of English racehorse blood imported in the twenty-five years preceding the Revolution into all the colonies, and many animals of both sexes were destroyed or stolen during the war.