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INDIVIDUAL BETTING GROWS IN FRANCE. Paris. September 22. The reports that August Belmont and other American horse owners are likely to bring over their stables, or a part of their stables, to Europe are welcomed in France, a country that gives a warmer reception to any one who wishes to spend money in it than any other. The newcomers will find that If they wish to bet on their horses they will have two methods .open to them, the pari-mutuel and the individual bet. for it is a mistake to suppose that the former is the only legal form of betting in France. When fn a fit of righteousness some seventeen years ago the Frencli government forbade all betting, the public replied with a boycott ot the race tracks, aud for several meetings the horses raced around without any one to look at them. The parl-rautuel system was then introduced, ly a rather hastily framed law which allowed owners and those interested in horse raising to make bets with one another, although no one could make a book, that is take bets from any one who came and asked him to do so. bets being limited to ones acquaintances. Several legal decisions during the last year have interpreted the law, which is not vcry exjilicitly worded, with considerable freedom. One result of this tolerance has been that the money taken at the pari-mutuel boxes already shows a falling off of ,000,000 for this year as compared with last year and is expected to bo 1908.sh,000,000 behind by the end of the year. As tho government collects a rake-off of eight per cent, on all money wagered under the pari-mutuel system, which it devotes to public works and the encouragement of horse breeding, this moans a loss of from 50,000 to 00,000 for tills year, so that it is expected that the government will soon take measures to amend tho law and prohibit all betting between individuals.
