1 6 AMATEUR VETS 



as for spirit, no very sure signs of that are offered 

 by an animal that has never yet been mounted. 

 And, in his frame, the first thing which I say you 

 ought to look at are his feet." 



Please note that in those days they swindled in 

 horse-dealing. We cannot too severely censure 

 inferior schoolmasters, who have taught the dead 

 languages so imperfectly that Greek and Latin 

 references are regarded by their former pupils 

 with apathy as being semi-mythical, and there- 

 fore having little or nothing to do with our 

 modern mode of thought, in fact belonging ex- 

 clusively to the realm of the " blue-stocking " and 

 the "prig." 



If lessons had been made more agreeable to 

 us when we were at an impressionable age, we 

 should realise how the cultured ancients rode 

 bare-back into action, and had a rough insight 

 into veterinary and a high conception of stable- 

 management, and were practical. For their 

 chargers often went lame and got "done to a 

 turn " by forced marches, injured by lance or 

 sword cuts in a similar way to the twentieth- 

 century troopers in recent wars. 



Just as English laws have been built up 

 from Roman legislation, so has the science of 

 veterinary — as we understand it — arisen from 

 the experiences of writers such as Kimon, or 

 Simon of Athens, who has left behind him a 

 fragmentary work written 430 years before 

 Christ. Whilst Xenophon, 380 B.C. ; Aristoteles, 

 333 B.C. ; Hippocrates, 350 b.c. ; Mago Cartha- 

 giensis, 200 b.c. ; M. T. Varro, t^^j b.c. ; Colu- 



