24 HORSES FOR LADIES. 



issued in order to prevent it from being damaged in 

 the eighth century." Cannot our laws do something to 

 protect mares, at any rate, from the cruelty of docking 

 in the twentieth century ? Dr. Fleming, in reviewing 

 the history of docking from its earliest times, tells us 

 that he saw an old print " which represented a very 

 emaciated horse, with a fashionable tail, standing in a 

 luxuriant meadow, his body covered with flies, which 

 prevented him from grazing, and from which he could 

 not free himself; a notice board in the field announced 

 that horses were taken in to graze, those with undocked 

 tails at six shillings a week and docked ones at 

 eighteenpence." 



When Voltaire visited this country in the first 

 quarter of the eighteenth century, he was so impressed 

 with our barbarity, especially in the cutting off the 

 tails of our horses, that he could not refrain from giving 

 vent to one of his pungent sarcasms in the following 

 epigram : — 



'' Vous fiers Anglois 



Barbaras que vous etes 



Coupez la tete aux rois 

 Et la queue a vos betes ; 



Mais les Francois, 



Polis et droits, 



Aiment les lois, 

 Laissent la queue aux betes 



Et la tete a leurs rois." 



