VETERINARY SURGEON 205 



I told him I was too late ; for they had found a fox and 

 gone away. 



After looking at my horse some little time, he said, " It 

 is a good job you were too late, for your nag has a severe 

 cold : see how he discharsres at the nostrils." 



I thought the animal had not sho^vTi his usual spirit, 

 and, after stopping half an hour, I rode him gently home, 

 and treated him accordino; to the directions of the ex- 

 perienced hand I had met in the morning. He got no 

 better, and in a few days alarming symptoms began to 

 show themselves — so much so, that I wrote to a very 

 noted veterinary surgeon at Salisbury. I had long 

 known him, as he and his father had been eno-ao-ed with 



/ CO 



my father in the coach business, and he had been very 

 judiciously placed at the college in London, where he had, 

 some time before, passed an examination Avith very great 

 credit. 



He came by the mail in the morning, and, after ex- 

 amining the horse, pronounced his disease to be the 

 glanders, of the most malignant description. I need not 

 add that the animal was led out and immediately killed 

 — an operation that my friend most skilfully performed, 

 by inserting his knife between, and a little behind, his 

 ears, thereby causing almost instant death. 



Thus, reader, have I been perhaps tediously exjDlicit in 

 relating the commencement of a malady, or I may say 

 plague, that ravaged my stables, and caused, in the 

 course of a few months, a loss of 120 horses, the greater 

 part of them young and valuable animals ; and this, 

 added to my other losses on the farm, was enough, com- 

 paratively speaking, "to break a royal merchant down." 



