DOCKING. 23 



to be, is as ungraceful as it is indecent, especially 

 in the case of mares. Our friend, the late Dr. George 

 Fleming, says in The Wanton Mutilation of Animals > 

 " nothing can be more painful and disgusting to the 

 real horseman and admirer of this most symmetrically 

 formed and graceful animal than the existence of this 

 most detestable and torturing fashion ; and those who 

 perform the operation or sanction it are not humane, 

 nor are they horsemen, but rather are they horse- 

 maimers and promoters of the worst form of cruelty 

 to animals. Let anyone go to Rotten Row during the 

 season, and satisfy himself as to the extent to which 

 the fashion prevails, and the repulsive appearance 

 which otherwise beautiful horses present. The 

 astonishing and most saddening feature of the eques- 

 trian promenade is the presence of ladies riding mares 

 which are almost tailless. Surely a plea might be 

 entered here for the use of a fig-leaf to clothe the 

 nude." I feel sure that if my sex had a voice in the 

 matter, this wholesale mutilation of mares would 

 soon cease. Dr. Fleming, writing in the Nineteenth 

 Century over twenty years ago, said : "I hope and 

 believe that when the horse-loving public and the 

 friends of animals begin to realise how cruel and 

 degrading some of these mutilations are, they will not 

 be long in having them suppressed " ; but the horse- 

 lovers do not appear to have done much in this matter 

 so far. This writer tells us that "the ancient Welsh 

 laws protected it " (the horse's tail) " from harm at the 

 hands of man," and that "an ecclesiastical canon was 



