108 HOW TO BUY A HORSE. 



especially on a hard road, so palpably that no tyro can fail 

 to discover it. For this reason, it is well that the pur- 

 chaser sliould always insist on seeing the animal which is 

 offered for his inspection put through all its paces rapidly, 

 for a short distance, on a hard surface ; since many cripples 

 are able to make a good show enough on a soft ride, laid 

 several inches deep with tan-bark or sawdust, or on a 

 piece of nice turf, which if put in motion on a macadam- 

 ized road will flinch and show the weak point immedi- 

 ately. It is rather, therefore, the points which indicate 

 past lameness, likely to return, or the incipient traces of 

 what will probably produce future lameness, for which 

 the purchaser should be on the look-out, than for actual 

 lameness which displays itself on the spot. 



In the first place, we will observe, that white hairs in 

 small spots on bay, brown, black or chestnut horses, un- 

 less on the face and feet, indicate wounds or abrasures, 

 where the roots of the hair have been injured so far as to 

 weaken the subsequent growth ; bare spots indicate wounds 

 of greater depth, where the roots of the hair have been 

 entirely destroyed. 



Broken Knees. White spots on the knees show that 

 the horse has broken his knees at some time or other, and 

 ninety-nine times out of a hundred by falling — although the 

 owner will always have a good reason for the blemish, that 

 the horse was trying to leap a stone wall out of the pasture 

 and grazed his knees on the coping ; or that he reared up 

 in the stable and barked them against the under side of 

 the manger; or something else equally likely to have 

 happened. Now, a broken knee from a fall, if it be healed, 

 is no defect in itself, and produces no unsoundness ; still, 

 as it is fifty to one that a horse which has once fallen will, 

 under the like circumstances, fall again, a broken-kneed 

 horse is to be eschewed even more than a runaway or a 



