Jockeys and trainers rich enough to keep race-horses ought to retire from business. Another nuisance of the turf which is attracting much attention at the present time, and which imperatively demands investigation and reform, is the heavy transactions reputed to be made on behalf of jockeys in the betting rings. "Will Integrity win, think you?" asks one turfite of another. "Well, on public form he ought to do so; but his jockey, I know, has backed Malpractice," and so a doubt is raised as to the honesty of the rider of Integrity. Men, too, are now pointed out in the ring as "So and So Bunkum's" (the jockey's) "commissioner," or as Grabmore, who executes the behests of Tom Strappem, the trainer, and it is a fact that many jockeys have heavy "settlings" at the clubs every Monday in the course of the racing season. _Apropos._ Some three years ago a gentleman who had a colt running at a fashionable racing centre in an important race, for whom he had engaged one of the best jockeys of the day, meeting an intimate friend in the paddock, asked him if he had backed The Chanter, his horse. "No," was the reply, "not yet. I am hanging on here till I know what Billy Mitchell does. What Billy Mitchell does I shall do." "And who the deuce is Billy Mitchell, may I ask?" "Oh, Billy is your jockey's commissioner, don't you know." The commissioner, on the occasion referred to, did not back The Chanter, which only came in third; his orders were to back Billy Purves, which proved to be the winner. Was the owner of The Chanter victimised by his jockey on the occasion, or was the information simply withheld that there was a better horse than his colt among the starters? Numerous incidents of a similar kind might be related, and it has been said again and again that there are even men of position on the racecourses of the kingdom who delight in doing commissions for jockeys. Said one of these gentlemen one day to a prominent owner sportsman: "Well, your horse won't win; your jockey has backed The Starling," and so it happened. No positive accusations are here made against individuals; but a turf system which admits of jockeys riding one horse and backing another animal in the same race to win them a large stake, is, to say the least of it, susceptible of some improvement; but where all, with but few exceptions, are preaching a gospel of gambling, reform seems, at the present time, to be far off. Three or four trainers are also known as heavy "speculators," and of some stables, of which it is said the principal patron does not bet, the same cannot be said of the trainer, who is likely enough a very heavy betting man, all the more because his chief employer does not himself bet. It has been sometimes said, indeed, of such stables, that the chief is but a cipher, and that the trainer rules the roost.