CHAP. I.] MR. CLINE, NOT IMMACULATE. 241 



for with unusual anxiety among the breeders of 

 farm-horses in Norfolk and Suffolk, where a famous 

 horse, well-built in every other respect, was much 

 sought after, even subsequently to his being de- 

 nounced a roarer prepense. Would his stock take 

 after him ? was a problem very desirable to be set 

 at rest, when Mr. Wilson, of Bildestone, late Sir 

 T. C. Bunbury's, propounded the question to Mr. 

 Cline, an eminent surgeon and anatomist in Lon- 

 don. In reply, Mr. Cline says, " The disorder in 

 a horse which constituted a roarer, was caused by 

 a membranous projection in a part of the wind-pipe, 

 and was a consequence of that part having been 

 inflamed from a cold *, and injudiciously treated. 

 A roarer was not, therefore, a diseased horse, for his 

 lungs and every other part might be perfectly sound, 

 but when a horse was in strong action, his breath- 

 ing became proportionally quickened, and the air, 

 in passing rapidly through the wind-pipe, was in 

 some degree interrupted in its course, and thus the 

 roaring noise was produced. The existence of this 

 in a stallion could not be of any consequence. It 

 could not be propagated any more than a broken 

 bone, or any other accident f." Unfortunately, 



* Not always so, Mr. Cline. The wind being driven underneath 

 the membrane that lines the throat, obstructs the free passage of the 

 wind ; lymph is often secreted in the receptacle thus formed, which 

 hardens in time, and is only capable of relief, by opening the windpipe. 



f Our human anatomist is very nearly right as to an accident not 

 being descendable ; but seeing that roaring did descend to the first 

 generation, we must infer that this was " an accident of birth," and 

 not a contracted one, which might possibly go on farther. 



M 



