HUNTERS 



increased heat, in short by acute inflammation at 

 the point of the hock. If in the condition last 

 named, the chances are that the animal has 

 recently struck the point of the hock; — an 

 accident that occasionally happens during tran- 

 sit by train, steamboat, &c. Active inflamma- 

 tion at the point of the hock, or hocks, may be 

 accepted as the best positive evidence that the 

 injury has recently been done. In about 90 per 

 cent, of instances capped hock is the result of 

 direct and continual irritation over a variable 

 period of time. It is an injury that is commonly 

 produced in the stable, by rubbing the hocks, 

 or knocking them against the stall-posts, like- 

 wise occasioned by kicking in harness, and 

 during lying and rising. Capped hocks in a 

 hunter are very unsightly, but whether one is 

 justified or not in considering an animal thus 

 affected as unsound, is by many regarded as a 

 debatable point. Being a departure from the 

 normal, it would be necessary in order to satisfy 

 the legal obligation to reject an animal thus 

 affected, no matter how slightly the defect may 

 be in evidence. It is there, and that is 

 sufficient. 



164 



