It cannot be denied that occasionally there still appears in the sporting newspapers some brief account of a “mill” that has recently taken place between those once highly-popular gentlemen—the members of the “P.R.” But public interest in this department of “sport” is fast dying out; and not one reader in a hundred would care to wade through column after column of an account of how the Brompton Bison smashed the snout of the Bermondsey Pet; and how the latter finally gained the victory by battering his opponent’s eyes until he was blind and “came up groggy,” and could not even see his man, let alone avoid the sledgehammer blows that were still pounding his unhappy ribs. There are left very few indeed of those individuals who, as “sportsmen,” admire Raw-Head-and-Bloody-Bones as master of the ceremonies. All the while, however, it is to be feared that the sporting newspaper of the present day reveals the existence of really more mischief, more substantial immorality and rascality than ever appeared in their pages before. As a quarter of a century since pugilism was the main feature with the sporting press, now it is horse-racing; not for its sake, but for the convenient peg it affords to hang a bet on. It may be safely asserted that among Londoners not one in five hundred could mention the chief qualities a racer should possess; but this goes for nothing; or perhaps it might be said that it goes for everything. It is each man’s faith in the ignorance of his neighbour, and his high respect for his own sagacity and his “good luck,” wherein resides the secret of the horse-betting mania at the present time afflicting the nation. As the reader will have remarked, so rapidly has the disease in question spread during the past few years that Government has at last thought fit to interpose the saving arm of the law between the victim and the victimiser. Numerous as are the sporting papers, and to the last degree accommodating in acting as mediums of communication between the ignorant people who stand in need of horsey counsel and the “knowing ones” of the turf who, for a small consideration, are ever ready to give it, it was discovered by certain bold schemers that a yet wider field of operation was as yet uncultivated. To be sure, what these bold adventurers meditated was contrary to law, and of that they were well aware, and at first acted on the careful Scotch maxim of not putting out their hand farther than at a short notice they could draw it back again. Success, however, made them audacious. Either the law slept, or else it indolently saw what they were up to and winked, till at last, growing each week more courageous, the new gambling idea, that took the name of “Spec,” became of gigantic dimensions.