The "favourite" from Diomed (1780) to Donovan (1889) has won the great race on thirty-nine occasions, both of the horses named being in that proud position. In twenty-three of the races for the Derby the favourite has required to put up with second place, and on fifteen occasions with third honours only; so that from the beginning, in 1780, to the year in which Donovan was first the favourite has won or been placed as many as seventy-seven times, leaving victory or place honours to be attained by outsiders, or at any rate, non-favourites, in thirty-two different years. In some years the winner of the race has started at what may be termed a remunerative price. The starting price of Hermit, as all the world knows, has been quoted at 100 to 1, but very likely 50 or at most 66 to 1 would more correctly represent the rate of the odds; two horses which started at 50 to 1 were Azor (1817) and Spaniel (1831); Phosphorus (1837), Caractacus (1862), and Doncaster (1873), were each priced at 40 to 1, at the start. Merry Monarch (1845) is the only Derby winner which started at 33 to 1; Noble (1786), Lapdog (1826), Amato, and Bloomsbury (1838-9) were all 30 to 1 chances, and on ten different occasions the winner of the Derby has figured at 20 to 1 as the field was taken in hand by the starter. Seven times have odds been laid "on" the winner, whilst "evens" have four times been recorded. As all interested in horse-racing know, the Derby, till within the last three years, has been a self-supporting race, and even now it is only, if at all, a little less so. Harking back, and looking over Blue Ribbon history, we find that those running horses in the great Epsom event required to pay for the privilege of doing so a sum of £50. Gentlemen who entered their horses, but for some reason or other did not run them, had, according to the conditions, to pouch out £25, and in the earlier years of the Derby "guineas" were exacted. In the rubric of the first race no sum is allotted to the second or third horses, but in 1782 it is mentioned that "the second received 100 gs. out of the stakes." No allowance would appear, in the earlier years of the Blue Ribbon, to have been assigned to the other placed horse, but in the course of time there appeared a clause in the conditions to the effect that the winner would have to pay £100 towards the expenses of additional police officers, and some years afterwards another exaction was made in the form of a fee of £50 to the judge; so that the very earliest traditions of the race point in the direction of meanness.