THE IMPROVED ART OF FARRIERY. 289 



times point out to them that they are wrong, but it can 

 never show them how to go right without a thorough 

 knowledge of radical principles. A man may for fifty 

 years of his life see the sun rise in the morning, and 

 set again at niglit, but although he knows the cer- 

 tainty of this fact from experience, still he may remain 

 till the day of his death as ignorant of the nature and 

 course of that celestial body, as he was at the first hour 

 of his existence. Precisely of this quality is that sort 

 of experience which is held up as the basis of all 

 stable knowledge, and from which it is considered a kind 

 of heresy to dissent. 



It is certain that there are some people who deem 

 the most violent and preposterous mode of treatment 

 as perfectly safe and harmless, merely because the poor 

 animal that is doomed to undergo it happens to sur- 

 vive it. A simple perusal, however, of most of the 

 stud-books of men upon the turf, will afford ample 

 evidence of the danger of the practice ; one instance 

 alone, having come under the observation of the author 

 of the present work, where in a Ust of the produce 

 of a particular brood-mare, no fewer than three 

 of eleven died in training. 



Accidents of this description, however, are so far 

 from convincing the owners of race-horses of the folly 

 and temerity of such a system, that they appear to 

 submit to them as mere matters of course, and are 

 ready to attribute the fatal result to any thing but the 

 true cause. 



This maybe called experience with a vengeance; and 

 it seems to have pretty much the same effect as the 

 spectacle of an execution has upon the fellow who 

 Is detected in picking pockets under the very gallows. 

 If every horse's constitution was precisely the same, 

 the whole business of training might be restricted to 



