INSTANCES OF INCOMPETENCE. 245 



entails such endless vexation, they will rarely find that 

 they have missed being possessed of a really good 

 horse through the ignorance, pusillanimity, or caprice 

 of their professional advisers, as is too often the case 

 in the present day. 



I was accosted by an old friend the other day with 

 ' I wish all the vets, in England were sent over the 

 water ; for that horse (naming the animal) has won the 

 big stake at , and has, in addition, stood being re- 

 gularly hunted with fourteen stones on his back for two 



seasons, and that fool of a fellow at told me he 



had a spavin and a curb on the off hock, and would be 

 of no use to me, since he would never stand training.' 



This, no doubt, is very often the case, but it is a great 

 pity, and still greater injustice that, because an incom- 

 petent member of the veterinary profession stultifies 

 himself, the whole body of professional men should 

 suffer. 



I was also informed the other day by a military man 

 of a case not a whit less absurd. 



This gentleman purchased a mare of a dealer and 

 veterinary surgeon, subject to the opinion of a pro- 

 fessional man of large practice, to whom the mare 

 was accordingly sent, and was, after an examination, 

 rejected as unsound from a bone spavin. 



The dealer, being much dissatisfied, named another 

 professional man, of whom the gentleman cordially ap- 

 proved as being a man of still greater experience, who 

 pronounced her unsound from defective respiration, 

 but perfectly free from ossification of the hock. Now 



