14 ON SOUNDNESS. 



though at other times, upon soft ground, or upon turf, he 

 will appear quite sound. This horse, we think, stands, 

 in respect to the question of soundness, altogether in a dif- 

 ferent position from either the stone-in-the-foot or the 

 tight-shoe case : here is disease — demonstrable disease ; 

 and although it gives rise but occasionally to lameness, 

 still, as lameness is at times the result, we hold that the 

 horse ought to be accounted unsound. The spavin — in 

 certain forms — affords another example of temporary or 

 transitory lameness; a spavined horse may couje excess- 

 ively lame out of his stable in the morning, but after hav- 

 ing gone a while and waxed warm, will no longer exhibit 

 lameness or even stiffness of his hock. In accordance with 

 the laws of the judges, and with that of our late Professor 

 (Coleman), such a horse being not less fit for present use 

 or convenience, being able to go through the same labor as 

 before the defect or blemish, able to perform the ordinary 

 duties of an ordinary horse — such a horse, we repeat, must 

 be pronounced, so long as he continues in this aptitude, to 

 be sound; whereas, however much we may differ concern- 

 ing other points, we believe all veterinarians will concur 

 with us in the opinion in declaring the occasionally lame 

 spavined — if not the lame frushed — horse to be unsound, 

 notwithstanding his redeeming quality of becoming sound 

 on work, and of continuing so to the end of that work. 



However strong we may feel ourselves in our axiom, that 

 a lame horse must be accounted unsound, the moment, as 

 we observed before, we attempt the converse of it — viz., 

 that every horse free from lameness is (as respects the 

 question of lameness) to be held as sound, we change into 

 a position most infirm and untenable. All sorts of diseases 

 and defects stare us in the face, which, though not the im- 

 mediate producers of lameness, too surely, in our minds, 



