172 HORSES AND ROADS. 



the present instance upon neutral ground, and so 

 talk to both sides. Those who are against it can 

 find no excuse for docking the tails of horses, which 

 custom cannot be considered other than vivisection ; 

 whilst those who argue that science can be advanced 

 by investigating the interior organs of a guinea-pig, 

 cannot argue that docking a horse's tail proves any- 

 thing more than that we are still little more than 

 half-reclaimed savages, with a remnant of idolatry 

 which obliges us to offer up as sacrifice the ends of 

 our horses' vertebral columns to that idol which we 

 worship under the name of ' fashion.' The whole 

 system is rotten. 



To drive a horse that cuts himself is cruelty to 

 animals, and at some future time it will be punished 

 as such. To rasp away, and thus weaken, the inside 

 of the shell of the foot, in a futile endeavour to 

 avoid cutting, is also cruelty, and some day this 

 practice will also be prohibited on that account. 

 The prevailing idea of cruelty seems to be that 

 blood must be flowing, or sores visible under the 

 harness; but a sore that gets hit with the foot is 

 quite as bad. 



The operation of rasping away the hoof, to cure 

 cutting, is as unscientific as it is unsuccessful. The 

 idea that suggests it is one of those that 'Im- 

 pecuniosus ' says * has sprung from wrong roots 

 altogether.' He cured his horses of this misfortune 

 by shoeing them with Charlier tips. The cause of 

 cutting is the shoeing. It is not meant by this that 

 it is the shoe or nails that cut as anyone may see 



