VI PREFACE. 



take credit for having sedulously avoided the use of technical 

 plirases, terms of science and learned dissertation, as well 

 as the crime of over-refinement with which 1 have rebuked 

 two cotemporaries, whose laughable sublimations are ideal- 

 ized at page ibb. 



Candour and ability for the task are not always found 

 combined with willingness, even among our best friends, to 

 amend certain slips of the pen, or to curtail such exuber- 

 ances as the more animated writers are liable to fall into; 

 and I am free to aver, that the friendly assistance I have 

 obtained in this respect, the nature of which may be infer- 

 red from the note at bottom of page 50, has not always se 

 conded my plain meaning, nor adequately fulfilled m}^ wish 

 es, though 1 am grateful for these and every act of kindness 

 After all my care, repetitions have crept in, and owing to 

 the length of time occupied in the composition, or rather 

 the manner in which the various particles of information 

 were collected together, and digested into form, great va- 

 riety of style may be discovered, though unity of purpose, 

 and the desire to instruct^ pervades every page. The ar- 

 rangement is at least obvious; the principles being taught 

 in the first book, the details of practice follow in natural 

 order in the second and third books, and seem to arise out 

 of the preceding "observations on the animal system of the 

 horse, as regards the origin of constitutional disorders." 

 The references from the latter chapters to the former, ope- 

 rate as exercises with those students who may have neglect- 

 ed to acquire and retain sufficient intimacy with the prin- 

 ciples laid down in the pages so referred to. 



The diseases of brute animals are few and simple, and 

 easily cured when the symptoms can be distinctly traced up 

 to their causes; for the remedy then consists in little more 

 than putting the animal upon a direct contrary course to 

 that which brought on the disorder (though not too rudely), 

 and health follows. For example, heat, inflammation, fever, 

 is the most general cause of constitutional derangement in 

 the horse: in a state of nature, he seeks out and employs 

 the remedy himself; when domesticated and pampered, or 

 at least denied the use of green food, we judiciously set 

 about reducing the licat by cooling medicines and factitious 

 regimen, and the fever subsides. Again, hard work occa 

 Rions lameness, rest restores the feet to their wonted state 



