HORSES, 133 



ACHICUITURB. 



HORSES. 



[Concluded from page 111.] 



Sill, — In my fust communication, for " are noble animals,— and" 

 read •' are noble apimals : and" ; a colon with no dash. The 

 printer's accidentally cutting up an integral paragraph into three, 

 has in some degree affected the sense of a !<.rge part of that com- 

 munication : in my remarks upon the peculiar advantages and dis- 

 advantages of the thorough-bred horse, I did not intend to be un- 

 derstood thaii, he never stumbled but in one way, or that he was 

 hable to become unsound no where but in his feet ; but that he 

 was more apt than other horses to fall in a manner which I there 

 described, more apt to catch behind, and rather more subject than 

 other horses to foot-lameness : which last fact 1 ascribe to the pe- 

 culiar manner in which this English variety of the Arabian, has for 

 a succession of generations been treated. However, for coach- 

 work, which is so much on the increase in Massachusetts, we 

 should have horses capable of violent occasional exertion, and to 

 breed them, let a man try what he pleases, he will always eventu- 

 ally look to blood. A single careless encroachment upon his pow- 

 ers, the coarse horse is, somehow or other, ever afterwards the 

 weaker for. My observation that the true Cleveland Bay h con- 

 fined to the County of York, is not entirely correct ; behaving 

 been always to be found in the bordering County of Durham. It 

 is going rather too far, to assert that all a horse's diseases not aris- 

 ing from contagion, assume an inflammatory form, but it is very 

 near the truth. \ will now make a few remarks upon the question 

 of Foot-lameness. 



The chronic lameness in one or both of tlieir fore feet, and 

 which never occurs in their hind ones, from which the superior or- 

 ders of horses suffer more pain than from all other diseases put <o- 

 gether, has given great occasion to inqniries and theories. Tt is 

 rather remarkable, that most of the methods of accounting for it. 

 have till of late years, gone upon the ground of the deviation from 

 nature of the form of hoof, wliich universallv takes place, in some 

 degree or other, when the horse is shod, and kept in the stable ; 

 and none of them upon that of the joints withiii the hoof being in- 

 jured by the concussion and strains, to which they are exposed in 

 fast work; and the disposition of all inflammation near a joint t(^ 

 be transferred to it. The sporting and the veterinary world bolh 

 decided, that it usually proceeded from something wrong about th<^ 

 hoof, with which the internal foot, had no part of it originally any 

 concern. They now go the other way, and assert that contraction 

 of the hoof is generally consequent to internal disease. Foot- 

 lameness should be a subject of some interest to the public, for if 

 dooms a very large proportion of our best horses to a life of com- 

 parative usel.essn.ess, and of excruciating misery. 



1. They had a vague idea that it was connected with the horse's 

 standing o,n litter in the stable. If this generally produced any 



