402 THE MODERN HORSE DOCTOR. 



especial reference to soundness regarded as the converse of or 

 opposite state to lameness. No person buys or sells a horse with- 

 out feeling some concern as to the soundness of the animal : the 

 purchaser is apprehensive lest his new horse should from any 

 cause turn out unserviceable or unequal to that for the perform- 

 ance of which he has bought him ; the vender is apprehensive, 

 either lest the animal, in other hands, should not prove that sound 

 and effective servant he conceived or represented him to be, or 

 lest some unrepresented or concealed fault or defect he is aware 

 the animal possesses may now, in his new master's hands, be 

 brought to light. Soundness, as opposed to actual or decided 

 lameness, (or as synonymous with good health,) is a state too well 

 understood to need any definition or description : when Ave come, 

 however, to draw a line between soundness and lameness in their 

 less distinguishable forms, — to mark the point at which one ends 

 and the other begins, — we meet a difficulty ; and this difficulty 

 increases when we find ourselves called on to include under our 

 denomination of unsoundness that which is likely or has a tendency 

 to bring forth lameness. 



" The number of ' horse cases,' as they are commonly called, 

 that have engaged the attention of our courts of law, have 

 brought eminent persons of the legal profession to our aid in the 

 solution of this intricate question. Lord Mansfield, years ago, 

 made an attempt to settle the point according to an ad valorem 

 scale ; setting every horse down as sound in the eye of the law, 

 whose cost or value amounted to a certain sum. This, of course, 

 was law that never could hold in horse transactions. Lord Ellen- 

 borough legislated with a great deal more knowledge of horse- 

 flesh. The law he laid down was, that 'any infirmity which 

 rendered a horse less fit for present use or convenience consti- 

 tuted unsoundness ' — a law which, though it admitted of great 

 latitude of construction, and to some especial cases did not prove 

 applicable at all, was still a wholesome and practicable one in a 

 majority of cases of dispute. Lord Tenterden made but little 

 improvement on it when he pronounced every horse unsound that 

 ' could not go through the same labor as before the existence 

 of the defect or blemish in dispute, and with the same degrees of 

 facility ' 



