THE HUNTER 8.% 



Let the rider instantly dismount. If he has a lancet and skill to use, it let 

 him subtract five or six quarts of blood ; or, if he has no lancet, let him deeply 

 cut the bars of the palate with a knife. The lungs will be thus relieved, and the 

 horse may be able to crawl home. Then, or before, if possible, let some 

 powerful cordial be administered. Cordials are, generally speaking, the disgrace 

 and bane of the stable ; but here, and almost here alone, they are truly valuable. 

 They may rouse the exhausted powers of nature. They may prevent what the 

 medical man would call the re-action of inflammation, although they are the 

 veriest poison when inflammation has commenced. 



A favourite hunter fell after a long burst, and lay stretched out, convulsed, 

 and apparently dying. His master procured a bottle of good sherry from the 

 house of a neighbouring friend, and poured it down the animal's throat. The 

 patient immediately began to revive : soon afterwards, he got up, walked home 

 and gradually recovered. The sportsman may not always be able to get this 

 but he may obtain a cordial-ball from the nearest veterinary surgeon ; or, such aid 

 not being at hand, he may beg a little ginger from some good housewife, and 

 mix it with warm ale; or he may give the ale alone, or even strengthened with a 

 little ardent spirit. When he gets home, or if he stops at the first stable he finds, 

 let the horse be put into the coolest place, and then well clothed, and diligently 

 rubbed about the legs and belly. The practice of putting the animal, thus dis- 

 tressed, into " a comfortable warm stable," and excluding every breath of air 

 has destroyed many valuable horses. 



We are now describing the very earliest treatment to be adopted, and before 

 it may be possible to call in an experienced practitioner. This stimulating plan 

 would be fatal twelve hours afterwards. It will, however, be the wisest course 

 to commit the animal, the first moment it is practicable, to the care of the vete- 

 rinary surgeon, if such a one resides in the neighbourhood and in whom con- 

 fidence can be placed. 



The labours and the pleasures of the hunting season being passed, the farmer 

 makes little or no difference in the management of his untrained horse ; but the 

 wealthier sportsman is somewhat at a loss what to do with his. It used to be 

 thought, that when the animal had so long contributed, sometimes voluntarily, 

 and sometimes with a little compulsion, to the enjoyment of his owner, he 

 ought, for a few months, to be permitted to seek his own amusement, in his 

 own way ; and he was turned out for a summer's ran at grass. Fashion, which 

 governs everything, and now and then most cruelly and absurdly, has exercised 

 her tyranny in the case of the hunter. His field, where he could wander and 

 gambol as he liked, is changed to a loose box j and the liberty in which he 

 so evidently exulted, to an hour's walking exercise daily. He is allowed 

 vetches, or grass occasionally ; but from his box he stirs not, except for his dull 

 morning's round, until he is taken into training for the next winter's business. 



In this, however, as in most other things, there is a medium. There are few 

 horses who have not materially suffered in their legs and feet, before the close 

 of the hunting season. There is nothing so refreshing to their feet as the damp 



lessly torturing, in a similar way, a poor Indian tortured sillcro, who in vain remonstrated Willi 

 slave, who was carrying him on his back over his persecutor, and assured him he could not 

 the mountains. It is thus related by Captain quicken his pace. The officer only plied his 

 Cochrane (Colombia,!). 357). — "Shortly after spurs the more in proportion to the murmurs 

 passing this stream, we arrived at an abrupt of the Billero. At last the man, roused to 

 precipice which went perpendicularly down the highest pitch of infuriated excitement and 

 about fifteen hundred feet, to a mountain tor- resentment, from the relentless attacks of the 

 rent below. There Lieutenant Ortegas nar- officer, on reaching this place, jerked him from 

 rated to me the following anecdote of the his chair into the immenso depth of the tor- 

 cruelty and punishment of a Spanish officer : — rent below, where he was killed, and his body 

 This inhuman wretch having fastened on an could not be recovered. The sillcro dashed 

 immense pair of mule spurs, was incessantly off at full speed, escaped into the mountain, 

 darting the rowels into the hare flesh of the and was never after heard of." 



