BEAUTY IN THE ANIMAL CREATION. ^ 



tails to a stump some eleven inches long ? Nay, I can well remember 

 the time when this destructive mania for improving the anatomy of 

 the horse by subtraction had arisen to such a height of absurdity, 

 that both cart and carriage horses were so entirely bereft of tail, as 

 to present an exhibition disgusting in the extreme. Simple farmers 

 and waggoners had been choused out of their common sense, and 

 taught to believe that such a privation added strength to the general 

 system ; just as some unknowing ones of the present day fancy that 

 the pruning-knife produces additional growth in those branches which 

 it spares. This docking pestilence (I allude to the custom of 

 removing the whole of the tail)' once raged throughout our island ; 

 and you would have thought that Dame Nature herself had taken 

 smittle, as we say in Yorkshire j for I knew a farmer's mare in the 

 county of Durham, about the year 1794, that produced three foals 

 successively without any tail at all. I once thought that I could be- 

 friend the valuable animal on which I am writing, by allowing him 

 the full quantity of tail which nature had given to him ; and having, 

 at that time, two fine steeds only recently broken in, I gave orders 

 that they should not be deprived of their tails. But I gained nothing 

 in the end. People stared! at me as I rode quietly along. One said, 

 if he possessed that capital horse, he would soon mend his looks by 

 having his ugly long tail off. Others remarked, that the horse must 

 be from foreign parts ; they could tell it by its tail, for the outlandish 

 people there were but poor hands at setting a horse off to advantage. 

 A third would cry out, with a grin, " There goes Long-tail ! " I bore 

 all this with becoming fortitude, till, at last, being obliged to ride to 

 Leeds for mass on Sundays, either the servants of the inn or the 

 hangers-on in the stable-yard made free with my horse's tail, in order 

 to turn a penny by the hair ; and they shortened it so much, that it 

 neither appeared one thing nor another, and at last I was reduced to 

 the necessity of calling in the aid of the docker to free myself from 

 future annoyance. This happened three and twenty years ago. 

 Rational people now-a-days will scarcely believe that, near the close 

 of the last century, Englishmen considered that the appearance of the 

 horse would be considerably improved by depriving the poor beast 

 of one half of his ears. Yet this was the case ; and it was a common 

 thing to see horses whose mid-parts were beautiful to behold, whilst 



