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THE HORSE. 125 



press has teemed of late years. Vicious, restive, and 

 runaway horses have been uncommonly numerous, 

 and the greater number of accidents have arisen from 

 horses in harness. This has, in great measure, been 

 the result of defective breaking and training in the 

 horse, the supply of the vast demand in this country 

 perhaps not admitting of sufficient time for that pur- 

 pose. The defect is more materially perceived in re- 

 gard to horses for single harness, which are in com- 

 mon pushed off by the dealers as quiet, after having 

 perhaps been only two or three times driven. We 

 need not wonder at any sinister result to an inexpe- 

 rienced or even an experienced hand, with such 

 horses in a crowded metropolis, or the roads in its 

 vicinity. Nor is the riding or driving such, at all 

 just or fair towards the public, even if the parties 

 themselves have so slender a regard for their own lives 

 and limbs; which brings to recollection a lament- 

 able accident of the present year, the death of a well 

 known dealer, from riding in the environs of London, 

 a mare that was a notorious runaway. This person, 

 though a middle aged man, had doubtless the too 

 common forgetfulness of the dangers to which he 

 was exposing others. I have known in various in- 

 stances, confirmed runaways, biters, and kickers, in- 

 deed have possessed several of each kind, in which 

 the vice was constitutional, inherent, and incurable. 



A buyer of horses, particularly if not quite aufait 

 at the critical business, should have in ready me- 

 mory and his mind's eye, a list of their possible and 

 too common defects, with a quick sense of the old 

 caveat emptor. Here then, I again present them to 



