14-0 England's horses. 



But the evil does not rest here. This bending of the knee and 

 straightening of the pastern necessarily throws the fore feet hack- 

 wards ; these now standing in the way of the hind feet, the latter, 

 in sympathetic accommodation, also fall back from their true posi- 

 tion, thus aggravating the evil already existing by throwing a still 

 farther burden upon the fore feet, which, again yielding to the 

 increased bending of the knees and greater erectness of the pas- 

 terns, called for by the increasing necessity for finding some pro- 

 gressive power independent of the true propellers, creep back a 

 little further, and push the hind feet more and more from their 

 natural position, till the latter, no longer resting flat on the 

 ground under an oblique pastern, but propped on the toes with 

 the pastern extending similarly to the fore feet, become liable to 

 similar evils, only that those bony deposits which are the invari- 

 able accompaniments of concussion, taking the form of splints on 

 the shank bone of the fore leg, assume the more formidable cha- 

 racter of " spavin " in the joint of the hock. 



Such are the pains and penalties by which Nature admonishes 

 and afflicts for the abuse of any of her provisions — so " wise in 

 their ends and economic in their means" — and as her arrange- 

 ments have been systematically disregarded (time out of mind) 

 by the manner in which we compel our beasts of burthen to con- 

 form to our impositions, it is not surprising that, with the addi- 

 tion of other concurrent abuses, they should be productive of evil 

 consequences to the horse genei'ally, and that he should have 

 entailed upon him in the domestic state an inclination to a faulty 

 carriage, and predisposition to, if not actual, disease, far too gene- 

 rally in very foalhood. 



