OF FARRIERY. 



313 



•©pling" and conscience, in this country, Horses 

 are torn to pieces before their tenth year. 



Horses do not arrive at maturity until they 

 are seven years old, according to the opinion 

 of Mr. Clark; but scarcely any are allowed to 

 complete their fifth year before they are em- 

 ployed in the hardest labour, except among 

 experienced sportsmen, who do not consider a 

 Horse fit for their use until he is six years old. 

 During the fifth year he is employed by them 

 in moderate work upon the road, or in riding 

 to cover. 



If Horses were used with moderation, there 

 is no doubt but that they would last till they 

 were nearly twenty years of age before they 

 might be called old. It is, we believe, among 

 naturalists, a general calculation that the life 

 of an animal lasts three or four times the 

 length of his coming to maturity, therefore 

 the natural age of the animal would be nearer 

 thirty years of age than twenty. Mr. John 

 Lawrence states that he saw at Dulwich, two 

 Horses, one forty-eight, the other fifty-four, 

 both capable of doing light work. They were 

 the property of his friend, the late Edward 

 Brown, Esq., who had the portraits of both 

 Horses placed in his parlour. This will be a 

 memento for posterity, to learn what modera- 

 tion in labour, and kindness will perform. 

 It gives us great plesaure in recording the 

 name of this gentleman, who must have been 

 an enlightened and humane master and bene- 

 factor to the Horse. That friendship should 

 exist between these two gentlemen will be 

 readily believed ; for if one had been the pri- 

 vate, kind, and benevolent master to the ani- 

 mal, so had Mr. John Lawrence been the 

 public strenuous assertor of the rights of the 

 Horse, through a longer period than is allowed 

 to most men ; and his memory will be em- 



balmed in the grateful recollections of the 

 humane, for his continued struggles to obtain 

 a mild and considerate treatment to animals of 

 the lower creation. 



It is painful to behold the crippled state of 

 many young Horses, which shews the exces- 

 sive exertions they must have undergone at a 

 very early age. The Horses of mail and 

 stage-coaches, post-chaises, &c., afford nume- 

 rous examples of this. We often find the 

 Horses that have been thus sold as coach or 

 post-horses, are those of superior shape and 

 action, of high spirits, and have perhaps 

 distinguished themselves as hunters, or in 

 matches against time, or in trotting-matches ; 

 and being considered unsafe to ride, from their 

 crippled state, are consigned to coacii-work, 

 where they are kept upon their legs by the 

 severity of the bit, and the frequent applica- 

 tion of the whip. The proportion of lame 

 Horses in this country, compared to those in 

 France, is perhaps as ten to one. This the 

 French veterinarians seem to attribute to their 

 superior mode of shoeing; but, in our opinion, 

 shoeing has nothing to do with it. The 

 peculiar frequency of incurable lameness, or 

 founder, in this country, is entirely owing to 

 immoderate work. 



Many men consider that if they but feed 

 their Horse luxuriously, they cannot get too 

 much work out of him ; but feeding him well 

 is no excuse for working him unfairly, nor is 

 there any advantage in it ; for, although we 

 may thereby render him capable for a time 

 of wonderful exertions, we shorten his life, 

 and interrupt his period of service, by bring- 

 ing upon him various diseases. We should 

 recollect that the power of the stomach is 

 limited, and so is that of the muscular and 

 nervous systems ; so that if we make an uniail 

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