INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. g 



thought three of them only (and they are of 

 the mildeft) fully fufficient for all purpofes of 

 horfemanfliip ; which is reducing the matter 

 pretty near to the flandard of our prefent 

 practice. One however cannot help being 

 difgufled at his repeated advice, to beat the 

 horfe about the head with a cudgel. There 

 are no doubt many ufeful obfervations in his 

 book; but from fucceeding improvements in the 

 veterinary art, Blundevill's work has long 

 fince ceafed to poilefs any other recommenda- 

 tion, than that of curiofity. 



About the fame period, and fbmewhat later, 

 arofe divers other writers on horfes; as Mor- 

 gan, Mafcal, Martin, Clifford, and others, of 

 whofe books I at prefent know nothing beyond 

 the names of the authors; and it is highly 

 probable their works contain little elfe than a 

 tranfeription of the veterinary practice of the 

 ancients, and a repetition of the fame fyftem of 

 management which we find in Blundevill ; had 

 they made any improvements in the art, they 

 would, in all probability, have been handed 

 down to us, and their works in confequence 

 preferved from the fatal gulph of oblivion. 



But there is another writer of nearly the 

 fame period, if not of greater merit, at leaft of 

 more good fortune, than thofe I have jufl 

 now mentioned. It is the redoubtable Gervafe 

 Markham, for more than a century, the oracle 



of 



