HORSES AND HOUNDS. 55 



rienced a much longer investigation is necessary. A narrow con- 

 tracted foot and a wide one are equally to be avoided. The first is 

 generally the result of disease or bad management in shoeing, 

 and horses with the latter are liable to speedy cuts under the 

 knees. Very long pasterns are objectionable, as also those in 

 the other extreme. The distance, however, fiom the fetlock to 

 the knee should be short, and the muscles of the arm full and 

 large. It has been justly remarked that, for speed, a horse 

 must have length somewhere, either in the body or the limbs. 

 The former is far preferable to the latter, although I have had 

 good hunters with short backs and bodies, but they were gene- 

 rally what are called hiick leapers, and not very easy to sit on 

 going over their fences. 



The diseases and imperfections of horses have been so fully 

 described and pointed out by Mr. Laurence and other professors 

 of the veterinary school, that I should probably be only sup- 

 posed to be taking a leaf out of their book were I to go at any 

 length into this their peculiar department. When the services 

 of a clever veterinary surgeon can be obtained, it is the safest 

 plan for the inexperienced to call in their assistance at once, 

 and to avail themselves of professional advice, even in pur- 

 chasing an animal. The fee to be paid on such occasions is a 

 very trifling consideration in respect of the risk any unsophis- 

 ticated person may run in being done out of a large sum of 

 money by buying a brute, and the pleasure of having to keep 

 him into the bargain. In the veterinary art, as well as others, 

 doctors differ, as will be seen by the ballooning trial some time 

 since, when some asserted that an animal so suspended must 

 suffer ; others, that he did not. The case a])pears to have turned 

 on this point — at least, so it is reported. The fact of the animal 

 sweating exceedingly, which was alleged by the prosecutor as a 

 proof of the supposed pain, was met by the evidence of wit- 

 nesses, who deposed to the same condition in other horses, 

 which, on the same evening, a very hot one, were standing 

 quietly in their stables. The cases, in my opinion, are not 

 analogous; and beyond that, they have no reference to each 

 other. Sweating in horses, as well as in their lords and masters, 

 w^e all know, can be produced by either excessive iiiglit, exces- 

 sive heat, or excessive pain ; and I should like to see any 

 philosopher who doubts the trutli of this assertion just sus- 

 pended by his smallclothes to the car of a balloon, with his legs 

 dangling under (only by way of experiment), to travel as high 

 as the top of St. Paul's. There is nothing extraordinary in 

 horses confined in close stables breaking out into a sweat in a 

 very hot evening ; but there must be some other cause to pro- 



