138 • 



not staiuVmg straight. I can propose nothing better than the stocks, 

 v/hich as they incline our children to turn their toes out, may also 

 bring our colts to turn theirs in, or out, when already turned in. A 

 two hours lesson of this kind, twice a day, and continued for months, 

 might, for ought 1 know, reduce crooked joints to reason. 



I have, in another treatise, recommended a practice, in which I 

 believe, I have been hitherto singular. That of docking the foal 

 while it sucks. I Avas induced to this by some unsuccessful cases of 

 docking full grown Horses, in which they suffered much from inflamma- 

 tion extending to the rump, but chiefly by the motive of lessening 

 generally the pain of a necessary operation. I have taken oif, Avith a 

 sharpe knife, a full hand's breadth of the tail of colts, from a month to 

 three months old, the animals suffering so little from the stroke, that it 

 did not occasion them to quit their place or even leave off" eating ; nor 

 were the w^ounds either bound up, or dressed with any kind of applica- 

 tion. I have also cropped them at that age, from a singular motive. 



A few words in this place on cropping, tying together the ears, slit- 

 ting the nostrils, docking and nicking of Horses, all which, the last 

 excepted, are barbarities and follies of a very ancient date. Xenophon 

 in a vein of mystic folly, which so often occurs in the writers of 

 antiquity, asserts that a mare will not so readily admit the embraces 

 of the ass, until she has been first degraded by being curtailed of these 

 graceful ornaments, her ears. Plutarch represents a custom however, 

 then unknown in Italy, the Horses of certain countries deprived of 

 their tails, on the supposition that such mutilation would render them 

 more swift and their back-bones more robust — ' ut equi Jiac miitilatione 

 alacriores, et spina dorsi rohustiores fierent.' And F aulas Venetus, writes 

 that the Tartars, docked their Horses, a pre-eminent breed, * auferre 

 sokrent de osse caudcE, nodos duos vel ires, ne equus sessorem feriiat, Sf ne 

 caudam mine hue, nune illue, fleetere possit.' That is, they took from 

 the bone of the tail, two or three joints, least the Horse should strike 

 his rider, by having the power of wisking his tail from side to side. 



Complaints also against these cruelties, were exhibited in former, 



as well as in the present times, and there was even a canon of the 



church, published against them, in which they were styled reliques of 



, paganism^ 



