THE ETHICS OP HORSE-KEEPING. 21 



His mate goes into a job wagon perhaps, possibly 

 into a herdic, and is driven by night lest his staring 

 ribs and the painful lameness in his hind leg should 

 attract the notice of meddlesome persons. The last 

 stage of maii} r a downward equine career is found in 

 the shafts of a fruit pedler's or junk dealer's wagon, 

 in which situation there is continual exposure to heat 

 and cold, to rain and snow, recompensed by the least 

 possible amount of food. It may be that one of the 

 old horses whose fate we are considering is finally 

 bought by some poverty-stricken farmer ; he works 

 without grain in summer, and passes long winter 

 nights in a cold and draughty barn, with scanty cov- 

 ering, and no bed but the floor. It is hard that 

 in his old age, when, like an old man, he feels the 

 cold most, and is most in need of nourishing food, he 

 should be deprived of all the comforts — the warm 

 stall and soft bed, the good blankets and plentiful 

 oats — which were heaped upon him in youth. 



If, as is probably the case, the old carriage horse 

 has been docked, his suffering in warm weather will 

 greatly be increased. That form of mutilation which 

 we call docking is, I believe, inartistic and barbarous, 

 and I do not doubt that before many years it will be- 

 come obsolete, as is now the cropping of horses' ears, 

 which was practised so late as 1840. But still I 

 should not utterly condemn the owner for docking his 

 horses, or buying them after they had been docked, 

 which comes to the same thing, if his intention and 

 custom were to keep them so long as they lived. 

 But to dock a horse, thus depriving him forever of 

 his tail, to keep him till he is old or broken down, 

 and then to sell him for what he will bring, is the 



