148 THE CONDITION OF HUNTERS 



added to its being surrounded by, and embedded in, 

 springs, its injury must be of rare occurrence > 



When I say that injury to the navicular joint 

 proceeds from concussion, are we not surprised that 

 mischief is not done every time a man leaps his horse 

 into a hard stony road ? General rules, however, 

 never apply to individual cases : and in no part of 

 animal economy is there more variety than in the 

 foot of the horse, not only as to its shape, but as to 

 what it is made of. I have had horses whose feet have 

 been very perfectly formed that could not go at all 

 without their fore shoes ; and I had one, which I sold 

 to Mr Lechmere Charlton for a large price, that carried 

 me from the further end of Witchwood Forest in 

 Oxfordshire, to Bourton on the Hill in Gloucester- 

 shire, a distance of at least eighteen miles, in two hours, 

 without a fore shoe, and without the smallest injury 

 to his foot, which was a narrow one — by the bye not 

 a soft country to go over, and the shoe was off at the 

 finish of a capital run, so that I know not what dis- 

 tance the horse might have gone barefooted. 



I must now bring this letter to a conclusion, but 

 shall resume the subject, it being, in my opinion, 

 one of the most interesting that ever occupied the 

 attention of a sportsman, as far as the stable is con- 

 cerned. In the meantime it may not be amiss to 

 observe, that as concussion appears likely to produce 

 foot lameness, by peculiarly affecting the part I have 

 been treating of, it should be avoided as much as is 



' Fracture of the'coffin or pedal bones, also the navicular bone, 

 though uncommon, does occasionally occur. — Editor. 



