i86 PETERSBURG IN WINTER 



and many other foreign horses had been received by the 

 British public. All I said was taken with a shrug of the 

 shoulders and an incredulous smile ; for Russians, like 

 Frenchmen, do not believe in the existence of a good loser. 

 The cab horses of Petersburg are largely recruited from 

 the stout ponies of Finland and Sweden (Finkas and 

 Shvddkas}. These animals are of the strong tradesman-cart 

 type, and appear to be mostly of indigenous blood. They 

 vary in height from say 15 hands to 13.2. They are very 

 hardy, sufficiently fast for their purpose, very quiet, and 

 cheap ; averaging about j or ^8 apiece. Figures 42 and 

 43 respectively give a good idea of the large and small speci- 

 mens of this breed. From illustrations in this book it will be 

 seen that all the Russian harness horses have long tails, and 

 that the drivers take no precautions to prevent the reins from 

 hanging down about their hind-quarters. Yet, all the time 

 I was in Russia, I never saw or heard of a case of a horse 

 starting kicking from getting a rein under his tail. It goes 

 almost without saying, that the supposed liability of long- 

 tailed horses to this danger, is the great argument advanced 

 in favour of docking harness horses by upholders of this 

 senseless, unnatural and cruel fad. My experience is that 

 docked horses are much more apt to kick than undocked 

 ones, which is a conclusion fully borne out by a consideration 

 of the distribution of the nerves of the part. It is obvious to 

 anyone with the slightest knowledge of anatomy, that the 

 end of a docked tail is far more sensitive to external pressure 

 than the end of an undocked one. Even granting that 



o o 



docking gives rise to no increased sensibility, the fact 

 remains that when a horse ets a rein under his tail, he is 



o 



unable to retain it there, unless it is closer to the root of his 

 tail than the point of amputation would be. The gross 

 indecency of a short - docked mare, especially at certain 

 seasons, is too disgusting a subject to dwell on. It is 



