We had two days' good spoi-t at the autumn races last Thursday and Friday, marred, unfortunately, by the Steeple chase being such a hollow mockery and by the totalisator row. We have not had a good steeplechase since January, 1879, when there was such a grand race between The Agent and Perfume, with Sportsman a good third. At every meet ing since then all the horses have been "stuck-up" at the fence and hedge on the rise of the hill. The jump is not by any means the worst on the course, but the ground is so much lower on the other side of the hedge than at the take-off that the horses cannot see where they have to jump to, and so are afraid of the jump. The totalisator row was the re sult of a most palpable attempt to swindle the public. Only four people had put their money on King Quail, in the St. George's Handicap, but when they went to receive their winnings they found that the number of King Quail's backers had mysteriously increased to fourteen. One of them communicated with Sub-Inspector Pardy, who placed some of his men near the machine to watch for the other ten ticket-holders. As they did not appear, he arrested the four men who were connected with the totalisator. One of the four is Richard J. Feltus, who began life in Auckland with every promise of rising to a good position, but, unfortunately, fell into dis solute habits, and this is what he has de scended to. The other day I heard of a novel method of "raising the wind, " which, if not very honest, was certainly original. A man took a lease of a cottage for six months, and entered into possession. A few days after the owner of the cottage was passing and discovered that several of the palings of the front fence were missing. He could not stop then to speak to his tenant about the matter, but went down the next morning to do so. When he got near the house he discovered that more palings had disappeared. He went to the door and asked to see his tenant. When the man appeared he told him that he noticed that some of the palings had | been taken away from the fence. "I know that," said the tenant. 