22 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE. 
very refinemcnt of cruelty. The Anglomaniacs, to 
whom we owe the revival of docking, should consider 
that in our climate of flies and mosquitos the practice 
is infinitely more cruel than it is in England. 
I have endeavored to show that the horse is an 
animal peculiarly capable of suffering, and to suggest 
some of the ways in which his suffering can be pre- 
vented or alleviated. Of late years, thanks largely 
to anti-cruelty societies, the horse has been less abused 
than was formerly the case. But let any one, and 
especially any one who may have a fancy for the 
human race, consider what awful arrears of cruelty 
to dumb animals have accrued at its hands. Let him 
think of the horses that have been baited to death, as 
bulls are baited; let him think of the unspeakable 
remedies that have been applied by ignorant farriers 
and grooms, such as the forcing of ground glass into 
the animal’s eye; let him think of the horses that 
have been “whipped sound” in coaches and heavy 
wagons, —that is, compelled by the lash to travel 
chiefly on three legs, one leg or foot being disabled, 
until the overwrought muscles gave out entirely; let 
him think of the agonies that have been inflicted by 
beating and spurring, of the heavy loads that a vast 
army of painfully lame, of diseased, and even of dying 
horses have been forced to draw. Let him take but a 
single glance at the history of the human race in this 
respect, and another perhaps at his own heart, and 
then declare if it be not true, as was once remarked 
to me,! “Man deserves a hell, were it only for his 
treatment of horses.” 
1 By the late John Boyle O’Reilly. 
