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GREAT GROWTH OF AMATEUR RACING. The Rockaway Hunting Club, one of the earliest promoters of cross -country racing for amateurs, will open the season of 1916 at Hewlett Bay Park, Long Island, on April 29. Other meetings will follow leading up to the regular racing season, which will be set in motion at Jamaica on May 18. In addition to the meeting originally scheduled for April 29. the Rockaway Hunting Club will hold a second day of racing on the following Saturday, May 6, at Hewlett Bay Park, Long Island. The later date was assigned to the Meadow Brook Steeplechase Association, but this organization has decided not to hold a spring meeting this season. A formal sanction for the added date will be given in a few-days by the hunts committee of the National Steeplechase and Hunts Association. The application for an extra day was the result of definite assurances that sufficient entries would be forthcoming to make a successful two -day meeting. It also would seem to prove that this is to be a banner season for amateur thoroughbred racing. A program of six events for the second days racing is being prepared by George W. Gall, the racing secretary, and will be ready by the end of the week. Three of the races will be steeplechases and three run on the flat. Efforts are being made to include among the former a race for the Meadow-Brook Hunt cup, a long established and famous steeplechase, which was first raced in 1883. The program for the racing on April 29 was recently-published. Entries for both days will close on April 19. Amateurs have proceeded this year on a more pretentious scale than ever before and the outlook at present is that the meeting of the United Hunts scheduled for Belmont Park Terminal on May 13 and 17 will be the biggest thing of its kind ever held in America. The growing interest in amateur sport of this character is shown in the increase in membership of the United Hunts Racing Association. From 100 on January 1 the association has swelled in membership until at the latest report there were 180 organizations in line. Men prominent in social and business circles are on the roster of the United Hunts and every man has done his share for the continuance of racing in New York state. A few of the leading members are: C. L. Appleton. Laurence Armour, August Belmont, W. Gould Brokaw, C. K. G. Billings, John McE. Bowman, Henry L. Bell, Bernard M. Baruch, J. Buchanan Brady, Ambrose F. Clark, R. F. Carman, W. R. Coe, Paul D. Cravath, Joseph E. Davis, William Dupont. A. J. A. Devereux, Robert A. Fairbaim. Peter G. Gerry. Robert L. Gerry, J. Temple Gwathmey, Thomas Hitchcock. Pierre Loril-lard, Frederick Lewisohn, Clarence H. Mackay. — New York Sun.
