54 THE ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN 



cannot be expected that you will meet with courtesy 

 or attention ; much less that you will be regarded 

 with honest interest as a customer. 



Your true-bred citizen, and almost as often, your 

 exquisite of the park, cannot tell a horse from a cow, 

 unless he sees him in a hackney-coach ! Yet even 

 where my previous advice is strictly followed, some 

 little skill in horse-flesh is by no means superfluous. 

 Few of the horse-dealers, even of the most eminent, 

 are scientific men ; they know the merits of their 

 studs by practical experience, but they rarely possess 

 better information. The ignorance of many of them 

 is so great, that I believe they often obtain the 

 credit of lying when they do not deserve it. — 

 Splents, thrushes, windgalls, incipient spavins, and 

 many other minor diseases, are always declared to 

 be "of no consequence whatever ;" coughs in par- 

 ticular are to be found " in every stable in London 

 at this season of the year ;" and any attempt to deny 

 these broad positions, or to enlighten the ignorance 

 from which they proceed, is resented as an insulting 

 suspicion, or ridiculed as absurd ! I have really 

 been astonished to find how generally uninformed 

 the dealers are in the very elements of veterinary 



