658 OPERATIONS. 



As the hair at the end of the dock grows much longer than at 

 other parts of the dock, the fact of only three or four inches of the 

 tail being removed, will cause such a tail to be out of all proportion 

 shorter than it would have been, had it not been docked ; supposing 

 that the hairs were allowed to grow to their full extent in both 

 cases. 



Some persons consider that a horse's tail materially helps to 

 balance him when he is turning; but this action on the part of 

 the tail is so slight, that it need not be taken into account for 

 practical purposes. 



HISTORY OF DOCKING.— The chief mutilations which have 

 been practised on horses in this country for fashionable purposes, 

 are cropping their ears, nicking their tails, and docking. Shake- 

 speare, in " King Henry the Fourth," makes Hotspur declare that 

 his roan "crop-ear" horse shall be his throne. This practice, 

 which was similar to that of cropping the ears of bull terriers, 

 has happily become extinct. Nicking, which is performed as a 

 rule only on Hackneys, consists in the division of the muscles 

 (those of the under surface of the tail) which depress the tail. 

 Hence, when the depressor (sacro-coccygeal) muscles are cut at 

 right angles to their direction, the animal is obliged to constantly 

 hold his " flag " aloft. This brutal operation appears to have 

 been introduced by Lord Oadogan, who was Marlborough's Quarter 

 Master General in the Low Countries in 1701. Bocldng is the term 

 applied to the amputation of a portion of a horse's tail ; and 

 hanging, to the cutting of the hairs of the tail in such a manner, 

 that their ends will form a flat surface which will be more or less 

 horizontal when the animal is in movement. Docking, which is 

 an old operation, was revived in England during the 15th century. 

 Lafeu, in Shakespeare's " All's Well that Ends Well," speaks of 

 a " bay Curtal," During the reign of Charles I. there was little 

 or no docking, which became fashionable in the reign of Charles 

 II. During the latter half of the 18th century, all hunters were 

 dooked, and many of them were nicked; and cart-horses were 

 docked close to the body, so as to give them a " buno^-tail," which 

 received that name on account of the resemblance which the stump 

 bore to the bung of a barrel ! The ignorant people of those days 

 thought that this extreme shortening' of the tail strengthened the 

 animal's spine ! Leech, who was a particularly accurate artist, 

 gave undocked tails to all the hunters depicted in " Mr. Sponge " 

 (1852), with the exception of the cob ridden by Captain Greatgun, 

 K.N. Docking hunters went out of fashion about the year 1830, 

 and was not revived until the early seventies. "Nimrod," when 

 writing in 1824 on " Hunters," says : " All horses used for pleasure 



