That the "small money" expended to-day in betting soon accumulates can be easily proved. Here is one way, for instance, of arriving at an illustration: there are at the present time about twelve thousand public-houses in London, nearly all the frequenters of which take some degree of interest in the Derby or other race, and assuming that each house on the average has two hundred and fifty regular customers, of which one hundred will have a bet on some race of the season, that gives a big figure. Should each person back a horse by even the outlay of a modest half-crown, the total money so invested would sum up to the very handsome amount of something like £150,000, and certainly quite as much would be risked by more daring backers. In this view of the case it is in vain to tell us that betting is declining, either on the Derby or any other event of turf speculation. The great obstacle to big bets being made is the miserly rate of odds now offered by bookmakers. In the case of Surefoot, that did not win the Derby of 1890, the odds laid on that horse at the start required the investment of £90 to win £40, a luxury that only people with more money than brains were able to afford. In the turf market the bettors--the backers are here meant--have, of course, the worst of the deal throughout, the money risked finding its way into a very few hands at the end of the chapter. Backers come and backers go day by day, but the bookmaker, who plays a prudent part, holds his place and strengthens his position more and more. Those familiar with the incidents of betting know full well that not one backer of horses in every hundred can live at "the game." Most bookmakers see ninety-nine of their clients go down, many of them with great rapidity, the kind, for example, that come on Tuesday morning and are squeezed out by Friday afternoon. Others prolong the struggle for a time by being able to fight a stronger battle, being, perhaps, more prudent or better provided with capital. Few of those who in any one year begin to back horses with the running of the Lincolnshire Handicap are able to live at the business to the date of the Cambridgeshire, which is the last "great" race of the season. Every now and again "plungers," as they are called in the slang of the period, make their appearance in the betting rings and carry on their betting with an enormous flourish of trumpets. The financial feats which they perform in backing horses are frequently chronicled by the sporting press, and thus it is we learn that "Mr. Blank" ("the famous plunger" of the period) "had another series of fortune-yielding innings yesterday, having landed over sixteen hundred pounds on the day's racing."