For training purposes, oats and hay imported from California are preferable, but adhering to native produce, a diet of boiled barley, chopped straw and bran will do nearly as well. Most of the important exercise is gone through at early morning between six and half-past seven, when the ponies are trotted and galloped on the course, and when all sporting members of the community, stop-watch in hand, assemble at the rails, or follow proceedings from the grand-stand while breakfasting on hot rolls and coffee. On return to stables, thorough dressing, with much rubbing of the legs, takes place, while an hour's brisk walking from eleven o'clock to twelve, and again in the afternoon, completes the day's work. [Illustration: THE OLD GRAND-STAND, HANKOW RACES, 1888. _To face page 87._] Each animal requires individual treatment, and it is the owner who best knows how to apply it that will bring his ponies to the post in the fittest condition. Carrying from ten to eleven stone according to measurement, good time for half a mile would be fifty-nine seconds, for a mile, two minutes eight seconds, and for a mile and a half, three minutes fifteen seconds. In dry weather it is an advantage for ponies to race without shoes, but if the course be wet or muddy they are absolutely necessary to prevent slipping. The jockeys are all amateur and mostly personal friends, as also are the clerk of the course, starters, judges and stewards, so that instead of a race-meeting being a gathering of complete strangers, bookmakers and professionals, it partakes more of the social nature of a huge picnic. During the winter months a great feature of sport in Shanghai is paperchasing on horseback. The meets are usually held on Saturday afternoons, when business offices are closed, and a field of seventy or eighty is no uncommon sight. Two members of the club lay the scent, but while free to choose any line of country, they must not lead the trail over jumps or obstacles which their own ponies have failed to negotiate. At the hour advertised the Master gives a signal and the hunt is away.