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MARTIMAS DOING WELL. A correspondent writing to the Spirit of tha Times from Toronto says : "Martimas looks well, though he has not grown to any great extent, but he has spread into a very muscular horse of enormous power behind the saddle. Still I was glad that Mr. Hendrie did not start him, for it would have been a pity to have had him beaten and his reputation sullied when it looks very possible that he may prove the be3t three-year-old of the year, east, west, north or south. It was satisfactory that Gold Car, for whom the president of the Canadian Jockey Club gave a liberal price when he found that Martimas was too backward, fulfilled the task for which he was bought. "In the Toronto Cup he had bad luck, as he grabbed his quarter, but even without this accident he would not have beaten Satirist at five pounds. In this Brookdale-bred son of Juvenal and Laura Gould, Mr. Seagram has a three-year-old that is a good deal better than useful. He is rather small and may not be up to much weight, but he is speedy and stanch. In tha Cup he made all his own running and stuck it out to the end like a true race horse. In Martimas and Satirist the Canadians have two three-year olds that every one has to reckon with. Satirist is of a rare good pattern. His head and forehand are perfectly modeled and I may mention that so excellent a judge as my old friend, Mr. Rhody Pringle, picked him as a yearling out of a bunch of thirty or forty youngsters. There is a good deal as to the future policy of the Ontario Jockey Club that is interesting. Next year the meeting will probably begin on the Queens birthday, May 24. which falls on a Thursday, and will last nine days to the Saturday week. This will be better in many ways. The season will ba more advanced and the weather warmer and more settled and the horses further advanced in condition. Beeides the Queens Plate can then be run on the 24th. The reason this has not been done heretofore is that the conditions call for maidens and it was not thought fair to necessitate the saving of the candidates beyond the opening day. "The club, it is hoped, will soon find itself in a position to carry out the alterations that the course still needs. The backstretch is very narrow, only some thirty feet, but the widening of it necessitates reclaiming land from the lake and is consequently an expensive job. Land is to be filled in and new stalls built. This would seem a risky thing to do from the sanitary standpoint hereabouts, but malaria is unknown in Toronto. Incidentally with reference to the apparently slow time made in some of the races it is a fact that the track was recently re-measured and found to be seventy feet over the mile.
