CONDITION OF HUNTERS RESUMED 299 



RING-BONE 



It has three times happened to me to have horses 

 lame without being able to ascertain the cause, 

 and on sending them to veterinary surgeons for 

 examination, the answer has two or three times been 

 — " incipient ring-bone." No ring-bone, however, 

 appeared. 



Horses with short unyielding pasterns, that have 

 been worked on hard roads when young, are most 

 subject to this disease — and a most formidable one 

 it is : for nothing but the red-hot iron has any chance 

 to contend with it, and even that will not always do. 

 A very small excrescence at the junction of the pastern 

 with the coronary bone will sometimes produce 

 violent lameness, and resist all remedies ; whereas 

 another as big as one's fist is comparatively harmless. 

 In 1820 I gave a farmer in Worcestershire £80 for a 

 horse with a ring-bone as big as half a twopenny loaf. 

 He had, in consequence, been sold for £15. After 

 riding him a season I sold him for £150, and he was 

 never lame afterwards from that cause. 



The presence of ring-bone necessarily would condemn 

 a hunter, in fact any horse. A horse may have this 

 disease of the bones on one or both fore-feet, or it 

 may be, on the hind, though more frequently the first- 

 named. In some instances very large ring-bones are 

 present, yet the animal remains free from lameness. 

 Considerable differences of professional opinion fre- 

 quently arise as to the presence or absence of ring-bone, 

 spavin, etc. The term ring-bone is often used as indica- 



