iQO The Book of the Horse. 



Suppose it is for a brougham, promised by the coach-builder to be ready in the course of two 

 months. Your first brougham ! Is the horse to be ornamental, or useful, or both ? Does a 

 lady only require it to take her into the park, on a round of visits every afternoon in the 

 season, and through a course of shopping ; or is it to be a family vehicle, to hold all the 

 children, and crawl out on constitutionals as a sort of nursery on wheels ? Or, again, is it 

 intended for country use and long expeditions, to run morning and evening several miles to 

 and from a railway station, or to convey a quartogenarian fox-hunter fifteen or sixteen miles 

 to cover? Is it for a general practitioner going his mill-horse rounds in Peckham or Clapham, 

 or the physician in whom duchess-mothers put their trust ? Is it to draw a light phaeton, and 

 be used on alternate days as a hack ? When this point is settled, the choice can be made 

 with more or less difficulty, in proportion to the degree of perfection required. Useful animals, 

 strong, slow, and steady, with no pretensions to beauty, sufficiently sound for all practical 

 purposes, and others active and fast, but without beauty, and that action which is in horses 

 what "style" is in women, are comparatively plentiful, and to be purchased by those who 

 know how to go to market at comparatively moderate prices. Before the Franco-German 

 War my limit for such horses was ^^40, and I have purchased very useful blood ones at ;^25 ; 

 but the war changed all that, and it is impossible to say when, if ever, the price of horses 

 will fail. Between 1863 and 1873 the price of all horses, except the very best, was at least 

 doubled. 



A horse may be serviceable without being absolutely sound. A one-eyed horse may go 

 very grandly, and a horse touched in the wind will not always make a noise in his trot ; 

 harness hides many blemishes and original defects. A pig-eyed coffin-head, or a rat tail and 

 scanty mane, will seriously depress the price of an animal otherwise excellent. Where im- 

 mediate hard work is not essential, it is cheaper to buy a horse thin and out of condition 

 from hard work ; for then, if constitutionally sound, he improves every day under the effects 

 of regular exercise and sufficient hard food, while a horse fat from grass or in dealer's 

 condition begins by melting away. 



But before purchasing it is important to ascertain that the horse is sound enough for your 

 use. 



Perfectly sound horses that have been worked long enough to know their business are as 

 rare as landed estates without a flaw in the title ; and if an unwilling purchaser desired to 

 cancel a bargain there are very few horses in which a clever veterinary surgeon could not 

 detect some latent defect. On the other hand, a horse may be apparently sound, and yet 

 have disease, or the germs of disease, which only a trained and experienced professional eye 

 can detect. There is also a third contingency, when, from carelessness, or to conceal ignorance 

 pure and sirr.ple, and be on the safe side, a veterinary surgeon rejects every horse presented 

 to him with whose history he is not perfectly acquainted. I lay great stress on practical 

 experience, because no amount of study in the library, the lecture and dissecting rooms, will 

 make a man a good judge on a question of soundness, unless he has constant practice in 

 examining horses, and the natural gift of correct observation and comparison. 



Some people have this gift of comparison, or, as phrenologists call it, " form," so highly 

 developed, that if they once get the proper conformation of a horse in their eye they become 

 better judges than others who have owned horses from their earliest years. 



I have particularly observed this faculty (in which I am myself extremely deficient) in 

 eminent engineers and artists, who did not become owners of or interested in horses until they 

 arrived at thirty or I'orty years of age. 



