of a good handicap the six dogs can be "covered with a towel"
when running over the winning mark, it is important to procure
every possible inch by securing a good slipper. It is only by
slipping some thirty dogs every Saturday afternoon that these
men become such skilled performers.

The dogs are handicapped on a very elaborate and exact
system. It is only just that a little dog should get a start from a
big one, as the bigger has the more weight and muscle and a
longer stride, and so a scale of weights and starts is made to
establish a basis upon which to handicap any dog whose perform-
ances are not known. By closely observing the running of
hundreds of dogs for forty years, and by striking the averages
after every handicap, the folk in Lancashire have elaborated a
scale which allows the best dog to win, and not the biggest.
Ignorant people will make up a handicap, giving the dogs two
yards to the pound, but this is rough and unscientific. It stands
to reason that a pound to a dog weighing 9 lbs. is more advan-
tageous to him over a dog weighing 8 lbs. than the pound would be
to a 28-lb. dog over one weighing 27 lbs. With the little dogs a
pound is worth more in proportion to their whole weight than
with big dogs. This will be illustrated in the appended scale :-

Bitches, being three yards faster than dogs, have three yards less start.

And so if one has to make up the starts of a number of dogs one would employ this scale, and the dogs at the finish would be very close, unless they differed much in quality. It would then be a "classic race," in which the fastest dog would win. In the next handicap one would put the winner back two yards behind the last mark, and the second one a yard. If any dog ran particularly badly in its heat, he would be given a lift of a yard or so. It does not do to be too generous with the lifting. Good dogs are not encouraged, and bad ones are kept low until the owner complains to the handicapper, when he is told to "get a better dog!" I cannot but think with regret how many bad dogs are exterminated every year, but as the whippeter is a poor man he cannot afford to keep bad stock.

On the other hand, there are feelings almost romantic between the owner and a successful dog; it is always the centre of love and affection in the family, and deserves to be when, perhaps, it has supported them from time to time by its winnings. And when it gets too old it lives for the rest of its life by the fire, and the family get another winner to run for them.

Of course betting is with the whippeters the sole aim of dogracing. At the winning end of the course there is a stand erected for "clockers." These stand with watch in hand and time the winners of the first heats before they and their friends put down their money on the ultimate winner. The dog-timing watch is expensive, costing about £9 or 10; the hand travels round the dial once in two seconds. Thus a dog can be timed easily to a sixteenth of a second, which represents a yard.

Twice a month all through the year there is a handicap of £25 or £40 at Oldham itself, at which some two or three hundred dogs are entered. After the first round one can generally get 6 to I or better on the field. Sums of £300 or £400 are frequently won at these handicaps, and I once saw a dog backed by its owner to win £3000, but he lost by a nose! Needless to say the owner was a well-to-do innkeeper.

There are many ways of acting fraudulently, so that the favourite cannot win. Doping and other tricks are uncommon; they are too elaborate. But where there is no careful supervision of the start,- -on the London running grounds, for instance,—the slipper gets the dog off with a bad start. This is so common in London that on occasions the pistol has been fired and none of the dogs have been slipped, the reason being that each man was

betting on the others' dogs. This of course reduces the sport to robbery and absurdity. But if the stewards insist on fair starting, there are left fewer ingenious tricks in whippet-racing for cheating the betting public than there are in horse-racing; for it is possible to see if a man has held his dog, however momentary the delay may have been, whilst it is never quite obvious that a jockey is pulling.

Personally the few whippet-races I have seen have always reminded me of a sight I was once witness to in an Indian jungle, where I was shooting, with a large body of beaters driving the game towards me. My station was in front of a small glade, the grass on which was cropped as short as the turf on the Downs by browsing deer. Suddenly across this little open space darted seven mouse-deer at full speed, frightened by the cries of the approaching beaters. They were tiny, grey, dotted things, with pipe-stem legs, just about the size of smallish whippets, and not at all unlike them in shape and form. Running extended, and low to earth, they cleared the glade and shot into the opposite jungle before you could say "Jack," much less "Robinson!" I think it was the fleetest entrance and exit I ever saw in my life. And when I was present at my first whippet-race, the memory of that scene occurred to me, and the conviction to my mind that a mouse-deer was the proper quarry for a whippet.

The speed of a whippet is almost incredible. The record time, made by a 211⁄2-lb. dog, named White Eye, was twelve seconds for 200 yards, which works out at a pace of a mile in 1 minutes. A 12-lb. dog has been known to cover the same distance (expressing it in the technical phraseology of the whippet-race course) in "7 yards inside 13 seconds." The racing pace of a whippet is reckoned at 16 yards per secondfigures that will account for the acute excitement when these little creatures are competing with one another

VOL. II

2 F

with (what you might call) the speed of a telegraph message! In such "touch and go" affairs as these handicaps necessarily are, the rules controlling them have to be extra stringent, and the slipping of a dog before the report of the pistol is followed with disqualification for the whole meeting. Bank holidays and Saturday afternoons are devoted to whippet-racing by thousands of people in the North, and, needless to say, there is a great deal of gambling and wagering on the results of the races.

Rabbit-coursing is also conducted on the handicap
The rabbit is allowed an average start of

principle.
50 yards, it may be more or less, and the dogs are
slipped from their handicap stations. There are no
points allowed to count for the skill displayed in the
course, as in greyhound-coursing, and each couple of
competitors are matched for the most kills of from
eleven to twenty-five rabbits.

It is an inexplicable thing why whippet-racing has never "caught on" in the South, notwithstanding that exhibitions have been given at some of the leading shows. Mr. Fothergill arranged two whippet handicaps, £20 and £25 stakes, at Lewes in 1901, under the management of a club formed by him; but, though the racing was very good, over 100 dogs being entered in the second race, the venture proved a great loss. The breed, however, has decidedly increased in popularity. In 1899 a Whippet Club was formed, and through its exertions the breed received formal recognition and was accorded a place in the Registers three years later. It is, by its very nature, not a show-bench dog, but classes are fairly well filled, and at the Kennel Club shows in 1901-03 the entries averaged forty-five, though they sank below forty in the latter year. Of course this cannot be considered very satisfactory in a small breed of dogs, and

one which numbers its votaries by the thousands in the North. But it is pretty certain that the Whippet Club, -which now has such names on its front page as Mr. J. R. Fothergill, Lady Arthur Grosvenor, Mr. Fred Bottomley, Mr. Harding Cox, and Mr. A. Lamotte,will soon improve the status of the breed, and carry it into the position which the intrinsic merits and physical beauties of the little animal it has been founded to foster, right worthily deserve. The sport of whippetracing, suitably conducted, is one in which ladies might find a great delight; it offers the quintessence of excitement, crystallised into a few seconds; it is capable of being conducted within private enclosures, and kept select, and it adds an attraction to dog-keeping which is not to be obtained in any other breed under the same innocent conditions. There is no blood shed, and there is lots of fun, and, I doubt not, as much joy in owning a winner as in the proprietorship of other "fleetest of their kind." And for this reason alone the development of whippet-racing is a consummation which no one could object to.

The following are the notes I have received from my contributors in this section :

The

MR. J. R. FOTHERGILL (President of the Whippet Club).-— Nothing could be better, as regards type, than many of the bitches now being shown, but the breed requires a few good dogs, a few good breeders, and a few good supporters. values of the points seem to me good, but in judging by points one can often go wide of the mark. More especially is this the case with whippets and greyhounds. With these dogs individual points are of little importance, even if they have them all in equal perfection, without symmetry, balance, and simplicity of construction. The whippet is intended for running only. Many a dog, with a row of bad points, is faster and handier than many a good showing-dog. The reason is that they have the above-mentioned qualities. Judge a whippet out of focus first, and then adjust your sight for detail.