SINGEING. 137 



yet there can be no doubt that in every sense of the 

 word it is more barbarous to mutilate the living original 

 of an Almighty Creator than a cold stone or marble 

 copy thereof, chiselled more or less imperfectly by human 

 hands. 



About forty years ago it was the general custom to 

 dock the tails of all hunters, covert-hacks, and waggon- 

 horses, so close, that nothing remained of this picturesque, 

 beautiful ornament of Nature but an ugly, stiff stump, 

 very little longer than the human thumb, which, especially 

 in summer time, was seen continually wagging to the 

 right or left, in impotent attempts to brush off a hungry 

 fly, biting the skin more than a yard off. At about the 

 same period an officer in our army took to the Cape of 

 Good Hope a gentle, beautiful, thoroughbred mare, which, 

 to his astonishment, the natives appeared exceedingly 

 unwilling to approach. The reason was, that her ears 

 had been cropped ; and as among themselves that punish- 

 ment was inflicted for crimes, they were induced to infer 

 that the handsome mutilated animal had suffered from a 

 similar cause in fact, that she was vicious. 



From the same premises, and by the same reasoning 

 faculties, they might as erroneously have conceived that 

 the holes bored through most of the English ladies' ears 

 denoted the existence of a uniform speck of some sort 

 or other in their characters. 



