308 HORSES ANCIENT AND MODERN. 



of his health, sometimes for recreation, sometimes to 

 risk his life, and more than once to save it, has, through- 

 out a long and checkered career, had to do an amount 

 of rough-riding a little larger than has fallen to the lot 

 of many men. We have our doubts ! and therefore 

 exhort them one and all to have modesty enough to 

 own that they may pick up not a few valuable hints 

 from so old and so shrewd a campaigner. 



At all events, we cannot conceive any one of ordi- 

 nary feeling not heartily sympathising with his vigor- 

 ous denunciation of the horrible cruelties of " vivisec- 

 tion," as practised at Alfort and Lyons, the chief 

 veterinary colleges in France, the pupils at which, 

 twice a- week for seven hours a-day, are instructed in 

 surgery by the cutting-up of living horses, which, until 

 they actually expire, are subjected to unmentionable 

 cruelties. Are we blameless in our treatment of horses 

 when in the hands of the farrier or the veterinary sur- 

 geon ? Far from it, when, without the application of chlo- 

 roform, we permit such operations as cutting off and 

 cauterising their tails, burning their sinews with red- 

 hot irons, dividing and cutting out a portion of a nerve, 

 and other excruciating operations on young horses, 

 under which they are often heard to squeal from pain. 

 " You are a man of pleasure," says Sir Francis " save 

 your horse from unnecessary pain. You are a man of 

 business inscribe on that ledger, in which every one 

 of the acts of your life is recorded, on one side how 

 much he will gain, and on the other how very little you 

 will lose by the evaporation of a fluid that will not cost 

 you the price of the shoes of the poor animal whose 

 marketable value you have determined, by excruciating 

 agony to him, to increase. As he lies prostrate, all that 

 is necessary to save him the smallest amount of pain, is 

 to desire the operator with his left hand to close the 

 animal's upper nostril, while beneath the lower one he 

 places a quarter-of-a-pint tin pot containing a sponge, 

 in which is gradually dropped from a little phial chlo- 



