OF WHOM TO BUY. 95 



deceived, and lo obtain an animal which will please him bet- 

 ter than one selected for him by a person employed as 

 intermediate between himself and the dealer. 



The first rule to be laid down, then, for the buyer who 

 wishes to obtain a superior animal for his own use, and 

 who is neither a first-rate judge of horse-flesh, nor a first- 

 rate horseman himself, is, not to attempt to buy out of the 

 farmer s or breeder's hands ; least of all at a horse fair or 

 agricultural show, — but from some large, "well-known and 

 respectable dealer, one who has a character to lose and who 

 is, therefore, not likely grossly and outrageously to deceive, 

 although he will probably not fail to do what he can in 

 extracting as large a price as the verdancy or eagerness of 

 the purchaser may give him the hope of obtaining. The 

 reasons for this advice are as follows : 



First: Breeders and farmers do not often themselves 

 know what their horses really are as to actual soundness, 

 much less as to speed, — which probably has never been 

 cultivated; or endurance, — \vhich has almost certainly 

 never been tested. So that a farmer or breeder will often 

 honestly guarantee an unsound horse to be sound, from not 

 knowing enough to have discovered the contrary. The 

 writer saw a curious point of this kind, when, in 1837, the 

 authorities of the Canadian government were purchasing- 

 fine Vermont horses for the use of the Eoyal Artillery. 

 The dismay of the formers who came in to sell, in compli- 

 ance with advertisements, was extreme, and their disgust 

 yet greater, at finding that not above one in three animals, 

 which they believed to be perfectly unimpeachable, could 

 pass muster as sound in wind and limb under the scruff ny of 

 experienced veterinary surgeons, who at once detected 

 the germs of incipient diseases which had not even been 

 suspected by the breeder. By buying of the dealer you 

 are tolerably well assured that when he bought he believed 



