CONDENSED ITEMS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 364, 1 May 1889, Page 3

CONDENSED ITEMS.

Plutarch is a consistent but unlucky horse. He has taken part in fifteen races won three, been placed second nine times, and finished three times out of a place. The erst Auckland-owned pony Mayflower is to be sent to England. Mr Stead has Maxim and Gipsy King thrown out of work for the present. Sex tant is doing gentle exercise. Lamond's 2-year old brother, by Newminster from Axiom, has been named Accident. The colt is said to have been struck by lightning when a foal on the Werribee Plains, hence the appellation. Why nob call him Ajax ? Manton has won in stakes £3,213 12s, and adding the £170 which he won as a two-year-old, his winning total to date is the good round sum of £3,383 12s. Mr H. Redwood this season has 12 of his mares in foal to King Cole, The Victoria Racing Club have decided to extend the suburban radius from 10 to 20 miles. This will have a serious effect on several old racing clubs and proprietary I racing clubs, as within the l'adius mentioned in future £400, must be guaranteed I per day. in prizes during any authorised race meeting. The Hutt Park Racing Club had a race on its programme at their last meeting confined to "grass-fed horses !" How did the stewards satisfy themselves that the prescribed diet had been strictly adhered to ? Despite a 101b penalty, Rudolph won the Hawkesbury Claret Stakes, a colt named Merriment, by Goldsbrough — Happy Thought, belonging to Mr W. Gannon, being second. Though the Claret Stakes was only established in 1881, Mr White has won it no fewer than seven times. In the matter of nomenclature, owners of trotters have jumped from one extreme to another, A little time ago they would have nothing more pretentious than Tommy, Kitty, Charlie, or Jimmie, but now we have a Maxim, Ormonde, Ossian, and Donnovan, and the rest of our equine heroes are likely to suffer similar indignities. It is just a hundred years ago, on 28th February, 1789, that the famous racehorse Eclipse gave up the ghost. The centenary of that event suggests the reflection that in . spite of all the changes of a century there is at least one English institution which remains essentially unchanged — The Turf. Volley and Cranbrook are both instances (remarks Sydney "Sporting Life") that its is no detriment to the foal when the dam is sent to the stud at an early age. It also upsets the theory that the first foal is an 1 inferior one.