THE MODERN HORSE DOCTOR. 359 



that is not due to cribbing, but to indigestion : still the popular 

 belief is, that cribbing is either the result or cause of colic. 

 The author's opinion is, that cribbing is a habit either ac- 

 quired or hereditary ; that the sound or grunt originates in the 

 vocal organs, from air admitted within them and expelled with- 

 out entering the trachea, and in consequence of air supplied to 

 them from the lungs during expiration. The grunt is evidently 



the oesophagus, coming from the air entering the stomachic cavity. This last 

 sound has some analogy to the borborygmi (rumblings) of the bowels. 



" In this manner we may explain very readily how it happens that some crib 

 biters blow their bellies out very much in the act, while in others nothing of 

 the kind happens ; so that in some horses the vice really proves prejudicial, 

 while others seem hardly at all decreased in real worth by it. 



"Hurtzel d'Arboval, and numerous veterinary authors with him, have sought 

 the cause of crib biting in the digestive organs ; but, in perusing this author's 

 article on the subject, it is easy to perceive that he has collected exceptions to 

 establish a general rule, and has mistaken the effect for the cause. Indeed, 

 the medical opinions of this writer savor too much of the gastro-intestinal 

 organs being the seat of diseases obscure in their nature. 



" I know many crib biting horses, but I am not acquainted with one instance 

 in which .the vice has proved decidedly (sensibtement) prejudicial, providing, as 

 is done in my part of the country, measures be taken to hinder horses having 

 it biting the crib any great deal. Many farmers, indeed, possessing such 

 horses, regard them, though perhaps through prejudice, as their most hardy 

 workers. I often find a single crib biter in a farmer's stable, where, perhaps, 

 he has been for many years among the other horses, where he has acquired this 

 evil habit, without the farmer's being at all able to divine the cause. And I 

 have possessed a harness colt, which no sooner was separated from his dam to 

 be tied up in a stall, than he commenced crib biting, without ever before having 

 shown the slightest tendency that way. He is at present six or seven years 

 of age, and still bites the crib. If crib biting, as some pretend, consists in 

 swallowing air to serve the purposes of digestion, certainly this colt ought to 

 have ill digested his food during the time he was kept from practising it; and 

 if there results from the act the generating of gas in the stomach, the animal 

 from this cause would have found himself disordered during his abstinence 

 from crib biting. 



" In general, crib biting ought rather to be regarded as a vicious habit than as 

 a disease : as the latter I have never been able to regard it. Horses that are 

 old crib biters present the inconvenience of being slow feeders ; they require a 

 good deal to satisfy them ; and those which generate air in their stomachs are 

 very subject to attacks of meteorization. To obviate such inconveniences, the 

 following means have been recommended : either the ordinary crib-biting strap, 

 or an iron T, whose branches so embrace the throttle as to prevent the horse's 

 arching his neck after the peculiar manner in which he prepares for the act 

 and accomplishes it." 



