ROARING. 49 



Distortion of the larynx and windpipe, there is every 

 reason for believing, is a fruitful source of this vexatious 

 disorder. Dissection is every day adding to the instances 

 of it ; and when we come to meditate upon the notorious 

 fact that — 



Harness-horses constitute a large class of roarers, 

 — we shall probably regard these views as well founded. 

 When we look around us, as we pass along through the 

 streets of London, and count the numbers of fine high- 

 spirited horses there are in carriages, waiting for hours and 

 hours together for their masters and mistresses, and all the 

 while reined up with their necks crooked in a form un- 

 natural, and constrained, and painful even to behold, much 

 more to be borne — as is sufiiciently manifest to any one 

 from the continual jerks up and down of the suffering 

 animals' heads ; and when we come to consider the con- 

 striction — nay, compression — that must all this while be 

 exerted on the larynx, together with the constrained bend that 

 must in most cases take place in the upper portion of the 

 windpipe, can we wonder at these parts undergoing dis- 

 tortion? At first, it is true, the distortion is but a 

 temporary grievance, the intervals of relaxation affording 

 the parts, by nature highly elastic, opportunity of recovering 

 their shape and tone to a great extent. Repeated and long- 

 continued acts, however, of such violence, gradually enfeeble 

 the elastic powers of the cartilages and their ligaments, and 

 the result ultimately is, permanent deformity or distortion 

 of the larynx or windpipe, or of both together. 



The tight reining-in of the heads of young horses for 

 any length of time together, and particularly of subjects 

 whose necks have not, by regular gradations of tightness 

 of the reins, been brought to bear the constraint with 

 comparative impunity, is a practice at all times highly 

 censurable, and one that has too often, in times past, given 

 us reason to date the origin of roaring from the breaking of 

 a colt, or his first lessons in the menage. Such harsh 

 treatment, however, is now, in all well-conducted riding- 

 schools, pretty well abolished ; added to which, the bearing- 



II. 4 



