Prevalence of Roavinrj. 25 



" Roaring has become more frequent of late years among 

 Arabs. This I attribute to the great number of two- and 

 three-year-olds now imported. Formerly there were not so 

 many young ones imported, and they came in small batches 

 in native boats called buggalows ; now they are brought over 

 in steamers from Bussorah, are crowded together under the 

 most insanitary conditions in large batches of one hundred 

 and fifty to two hundred— the voyage generally lasting from 

 three weeks to a month, from Bussorah to Bombay. During 

 the voyage Strangles invariably breaks out, and generally 

 assumes a most virulent form, and from the absence of all 

 treatment, the consequence is that a number of the affected 

 animals become Roarers. Among the Arabs I have also 

 noticed that the larger and coarser the horse the more likely 

 he is to become a Roarer. This I attribute to the fact that 

 most of these very large horses, from 14.3^- to 15.2 hands 

 high, are not pure-bred Arabs, they having an admixture 

 of foreign blood, which gives them size at the expense of 

 quality, the pure desert-born horse being an exceedingly 

 clear- winded animal. 



" Strangles is not so frequent a cause of Roaring in Aus- 

 tralians as it is in the Arab in this country, because the 

 former are seldom imported under four years old, and have 

 generally had the disease before shipment. 



" I have observed two distinct kinds of Roaring in this 

 country : one, which is permanent, and becomes gradually 

 worse with fast work, and the other, which diminishes as the 

 horse gets into condition, disappearing altogether while the 

 animal is kept in racing condition ; on the other hand, how- 

 ever, such a horse, when turned out of w^ork at the end of 

 the racing season, will again begin to Roar, and continue to 

 do so while out of work and gross. 



" The late Colonel Robarts, a well-known Indian sports- 

 man, Avas a great advocate for ghee (clarified butter) in 

 Roaring. He used to give the Australian chestnut thorough- 

 bred mare Music (an inveterate Roarer), \ lb. of warm 



