104 HOW TO BUY A HORSE. 



times cause the animal to wink and even to start back, as 

 if he saw the motion which produced it. 



DEFECTS TO BE DETECTED IN THE WIND. 



Next to the eyes, the wind, as it is commonly called, or 

 the condition of the lungs of the animal, is to be exam- 

 ined; and this is liable to so many modifications, and 

 affects the animal so fatally as to his utility, when required 

 for even moderately rapid work, that too much care cannot 

 be had in the examination. It is needless to say that a horse, 

 with the slightest imperfection of his lungs, windpipe, or 

 breathing apparatus, ought at once to be rejected ; as there 

 is no hope of its ever decreasing, being cured, or palliated, 

 either by rest or by work ; but on the contrary, an ab- 

 solute certainty of its growing worse, day by day, and 

 the more so the faster and more regularly the animal is 

 worked, until it becomes absolutely broken-winded and 

 useless. 



In this stage of the disease it needs no examination to 

 detect it : when at work, the loud, sobbing breath, and 

 the laborious heaving and jerking collapse of the flanks, 

 show it too plainly to be mistaken. It is caused by a rup- 

 ture of some of the air-cells of the lungs, and the inspi- 

 ration of the air is readily effected by the animal at a single 

 effort, as usual ; but the expiration of the air, from the 

 ruptured and ragged cavities into which it has been ad- 

 mitted, requires a double effort ; and wdien the disease is 

 in its worst form, even two efforts are insufficient fully to 

 expel it. 



Broken wind is accompanied with a hard, husky 

 cough, which is not easily described, but cannot be mis- 

 taken by any one who is used to horses. Broken-winded 

 horses can never be cured, since it is not in the power of 

 human art to build up and restore a broken-down and dis- 

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