l<f(> THE HUNTING FIELD 



The above is really and truly an account rendered by 

 Bullvvaist so recently as 1S36, and looking at the spelling, 

 and the style of the man, what a mass of cruelty his ignorant, 

 brutish barbarity must have inflicted upon the poor animals 

 that the last fifty or five-and-fifty years have brought under 

 the ban of his ignorance. "To A Botel of Blistern oil," 

 for a bottle of blistering oil : and to " firin the marledg," for 

 firing the mare's leg. "The Jurney to Ruben them," perhaps 

 requires the aid of the glossary even more than the others, 

 and were it not for the " pot of oinement " that precedes the 

 item, we should have been puzzled to collect that the 

 "Jurney to Ruben them," meant a journey to rubbing them 

 with the precious stuff. 



We have another bill of the same worthy's before us, 

 where there is a charge for " a bottel of essens," meaning a 

 bottle of essence (essence of what? we wonder), and there is an 

 item "To Rowling the mar and sane," or sow, we cannot tell 

 which, that quite beats our power of deciphering. Then the 

 impudence of a fellow so replete with ignorance charging as 

 much, nay more, for his medicine than the regularly educated 

 practitioner. Three shillings for two " pirgin bales," meaning, 

 we presume, two physic balls, which we all know can be 

 bought at any chemists for a shilling a-piece, or for ten 

 shillings a dozen. The veterinary surgeons, we may observe, 

 do themselves no good by exorbitant charges for medicine, it 

 only drives custom away to the chemist that would otherwise 

 come to them. " Live and let live," is a good useful motto, 

 applicable to vets as well as to other trades. There is a story 

 told of a young " sawbones," who, on sending in his bill to his 

 solitary patient, added the following note : — 



" Being a young man anxious to get forvvaid I have charged double," 



and Elijah Bullwaist is in a somewhat similar predicament, 

 only he is an old man whose business has left him. 



