BLINDXESS. 149 



BLINDNESS. 



Under this head I shall consider those cases of blindness 

 not immediately resulting from active disease. Blindness, as 

 remarked in my hints on breeding, is hereditary to a great 

 extent ; but not, as some imagine, to the extent of the horse 

 becoming blind without any other cause. The horse inherits 

 a predisposition to the disease, and it, therefore, only requires 

 a moderate amount of exposure to those influences calculated 

 to affect the eyes to develop blindness. Blindness is by no 

 means an atfection to which the horse is peculiarly liable in 

 the state of nature, for the undomesticated animal is hardly 

 ever affected with it. The offspring of one horse will go blind 

 as soon as exposed to the exciting cause, while those of an- 

 other horse, by the same mares, will resist such influences, 

 and never become blind. 



It is impossible to calculate the influence of bad manage- 

 ment in producing blindness. But, after reflecting on the ex- 

 posures to which horses are subjected in many parts of the 

 country, the wonder will not be that so many horses go blind, 

 but that any of them should retain their sight. It is no un- 

 common thing, on stepping into a stable, to be greeted by an 

 effluvia, rising from the dung and urine accumulated around 

 the horses' stalls, so strong as to occasion smarting of the eyes 

 and even of the nose. In such places, the horse has no 

 chance to lie down except in his om'u excrement, a thing which, 

 from his natural sense of decency, he abhors to do. In other 

 cases, the horse is constrained to stand in a close stall, with 

 his hind-feet on a pile of manure, perhaps two feet above his 

 fore ones, and if he lies down at all, it is in the same uncom- 

 fortable position, and when once down, he can hardly get up 

 again. If the inhumanly careless owner were put to sleep 

 where every thing under him was wet and of the most offens- 

 ive character, and with a pair of pillows under the lower part 

 of his body, he might learn sympathy for his poor, faithful 



