THE ETHICS OF HORSE-KEEPING. 21 
His mate goes into a job wagon perhaps, possibly 
into a herdic, and is driven by night lest his staring 
ribs and the painful lameness in his hind leg should 
attract the notice of meddlesome persons. The last 
stage of many a downward equine career is. found in 
the shafts of a fruit pedler’s or junk dealer’s wagon, 
in which situation there is continual exposure to heat 
and cold, to rain and snow, recompensed by the least 
possible amount of food. It may be that one of the 
old horses whose fate we are considering is finally 
bought by some poverty-stricken farmer; he works 
without grain in summer, and passes long winter 
nights in a cold and draughty barn, with scanty cov- 
ering, and no bed but the floor. It is hard that 
in his old age, when, like an old man, he feels the 
cold most, and is most in need of nourishing food, he 
should be deprived of all the comforts—the warm 
stall and soft bed, the good blankets and plentiful 
oats — which were heaped upon him in youth. 
If, as is probably the case, the old carriage horse 
has been docked, his suffering in warm weather will 
greatly be increased. That form of mutilation which 
we call docking is, I believe, inartistic and barbarous, 
and I do not doubt that before many years it will be- 
come obsolete, as is now the cropping of horses’ ears, 
which was practised so late as 1840. But still I 
should not utterly condemn the owner for docking his 
horses, or buying them after they had been docked, 
which comes to the same thing, if, his intention and 
custom were to keep them so long as they lived. 
But to dock a horse, thus depriving him forever of 
his tail, to keep him till he is old or broken down, 
and then to sell him for what he will bring, is the 
