AS TO SOUNDNESS. 



LECTURE XV. 



Spavin {co?iti?iuea). 



Gentlemen, — It is to be sincerely hoped that you give 

 the subject of each lecture room in your already much 

 occupied thoughts after leaving this theatre. If you 

 have done so with regard to the subject of our last dis- 

 course, I venture to assert that you will have concluded 

 that if " concussion " were the cause of spavin — I mean 

 the concussion produced when the horse puts his foot to 

 the ground — then the straight hock, and not the bent 

 one, ought to be the more frequent subject of spavin. 

 Now this is not so, as any judge of "horse flesh" will 

 tell you. It is your bent hock that is alike the most 

 frequent subject of spavin and of curb — the hock that 

 can be extremely flexed. 



We come next to the important question — what 

 spavins lame horses? This to. some of you may seem 

 an absurd question. Most horsemen think that all 

 spavins lame horses. And yet they do not, as all veteri- 

 narians and all really good judges of horses will tell you. 

 We know, for a certainty, that it is the spavin that is 



