256 ESSENTIALS OF VETERINARY LAW 



jack to continue until July, the owner of the jack 

 to receive five dollars for each colt, or pay at the 

 rate of twenty dollars a month, when the contract 

 was cancelled by agreement in May it was held 

 that on the failure of the plaintiff to elect the 

 method of payment the defendant might do so.^^ 

 A contract to pay fifty dollars for the colts of five 

 mares to be put to a jack, colts or no colts, was 

 held not payable until the usual weaning time of 

 the colts, unless there be express agreements to 

 the contrary. ^^ 



206. Warranty of Sound Heredity. Although 

 it was stated in one case ^^ that there is no implied 

 warranty in the contract for the services of a stal- 

 lion that the animal is free from disease which 

 may be transmitted to oifspring, this general con- 

 clusion should not be drawn from the case in ques- 

 tion. So far as is known today in science, the 

 transmission of disease directly from father to 

 child is extremely improbable. The father may, 

 by direct contact, communicate a disease to the 

 mother; and similarly the mother may communi- 

 cate it to the child; but these are cases of con- 

 tagion, not of heredity. But by heredity parents 

 do become reproduced as to structure in the off- 

 spring. Certain structural forms predispose the 

 animal to definite weaknesses. Thus, with certain 

 conformation of the limbs an animal is predis- 

 posed toward the development of a spavin, when- 

 ever the joint is put upon strain. The colt inherits 



15 Conwell V. Smith, 8 Ind. it Briggs v, Hunton, 87 Me. 

 o30. 145, 32 Atl. 794. 



16 Brown v. Mattingly, 42 Ky. 

 592. 



