"The ingenuity and industry expended on what is called 'tipping' in connection with horse-racing ought to bring good fortune in no halting measure to the professors of the art, who appear to spend their lives in trying to enrich everybody but themselves." So wrote, some four or five years ago, an essayist in the pages of one of the "superior" magazines. That the business of tipping goes on as briskly as ever, the experts in that line of turf illusion being still busily occupied in benevolent endeavours to confer benefit on their fellow-men, can be ascertained by all who will take the trouble to glance over the advertising columns of the numerous sporting journals of the time. A point worthy of notice in connection with these announcements is the style now adopted in fashioning them. New and improved methods of communicating with the public are constantly being devised. Tipping nowadays is a "business" of importance requiring large dealings with the telegraph; but long ago--say about the close of the "thirties," and in the "forties" of the present century, when the writer became interested in horse-racing, consequent on having won a few sovereigns by the victory of Merry Monarch in the Derby--tipping was much less obtrusive than it is to-day, and was carried on chiefly by means of what may be called "disguises." Such announcements as were made public usually bore that the advertiser was in exclusive possession of information about a horse which was certain to win the Derby or some other important race; but, as a rule, the great event decided at Epsom was, in the beginning of tipping, the race most favoured, and the person advertising not seldom posed as "a gentleman's valet out of a place," or as "a stableman dying of consumption," or "an old military man," or as some person very remote from the being he really was. "Who, then," it will be asked, "were those persons?" Well, as there were not so many of them as there are to-day, when "tipping," as was said a few months ago to a magistrate, is a "profession," it will not prove a difficult task to give information about their ways of working, as I happen to be able to speak with some degree of knowledge of two or three of the number who were among the first to advertise in days when the mediums for such announcements were anything but numerous, and advertising was somewhat costly, there being then an advertisement duty of one shilling and sixpence exigible on each announcement, whilst postage was also expensive.