The Derby Day, with its attendant incidents, has been so often described that there is little or nothing left to say which can be endowed with the form of novelty. Writers, grave and gay, have written accounts of the great race and its surroundings from many points of view. What has been seen on the way to Epsom Downs has been over and over again described in graphic language. To the Derby, by road or rail, has afforded the industrious descriptive reporter yards of "copy"; incidents, comic and pathetic, have been seen or invented by "our own"; and the suggestion of a London pressman to hark back on the old accounts and republish them with a little "dressing up" was not a bad one. An industrious penman might find in some of the descriptions written twenty years ago matter that, judiciously recompiled, would not be without a considerable thread of interest. The number of persons who annually witness the running for the Derby Stakes has been variously stated by statisticians, and has been guessed at half a million; but other writers do not think the attendance ever exceeded two hundred and fifty thousand individuals; and one or two well-informed persons who have ventured to take a census of the number present on the Downs on the Derby Day, do not venture to say that it exceeds a hundred thousand, all told; but even that figure would represent a vast multitude of people. The Derby is no longer the great betting race it was at one time. Sixty years since, hundreds of thousands of pounds in big sums, it was thought, would change hands, the bulk of the money going into the pockets of a few persons, and these generally being in connection with "the stable." In some years very good prices have been obtained against the winning horse just previous to the start, and it is a mistake to suppose, as many people who know no better often do, that "the winner of the Derby always starts favourite." That is not so.