DISEASES, DEFECTS, ETC. 75 



Mm less capable of work of any description, or which in 

 its ordinary progress will diminish the natural usefulness of 

 the_ animal ; or if the horse has, either from disease or 

 accident, undergone any alteration of structure that either 

 actually does at the time, or in its ordinary eifects will, 

 diminish the natural usefulness of the horse, such a horse is 

 unsound." 



" If the cough actually existed at the time of the sale as 

 a disease so as actually to diminish the natural usefulness 

 of the horse at that time, and to make him then less 

 capable of immediate work, he was then unsound; or if 

 you think the cough, which in fact did afterwards diminish 

 the usefulness of the horse, existed at all at the time of 

 sale, you will find for the plaintiff. I am not now deliver- 

 ing an opinion formed on the moment on a new subject, 

 but it is the result of a full previous consideration, as I 

 find I differ from the law as laid down by a learned 

 Judge " (m). The jury found a verdict for the plaintiff (v). 



Crib-hiting, being an unnatural sucking in of the air, Crib-biting, 

 must be to a certain degree injurious to digestion, must dis- 

 pose to colic, and so interfere with the strength and useful- 

 ness and health of the horse. Some crib-biters are good 

 goers, but they probably would have possessed more endur- 

 ance had they not acquired this habit ; and it is a fact weU 

 estabhshed, that as soon as a horse begins to become a crib- 

 biter, he, in more than nine cases out of ten, begins to lose 

 condition. He is not to the experienced eye the horse he 

 was before. The wear of the front teeth, and even the frequent 

 breaking of them, makes a horse old before his time, and 

 sometimes renders it difficult or almost impossible for him 

 to graze {iv). 



Crib-biting which has not yet produced disease or altera- Wben not an 

 tion of structure is not an unsoundness, but is a vice under ^soundnesa. 

 a warranty that a horse is " sound and free from vice." 

 Thus, where an action was brought on the warranty of a 

 horse which had been sold for ninety guineas, the question 

 was, whether crib-biting, which was the vice in question, was 

 such a species of unsoundness as to sustain the action. The 

 horse had been warranted sound generally. Some emi- 

 nent veterinary surgeons were called as witnesses, who 

 stated that the habit of crib-biting originated in indigestion ; 



(«) Mr. Justice Coleridge m Bol- (w) Lib. U. K. "Tbe Horse," 



den V. B-rogden, 2 M. & Eob. 113. 362. See also App. to U. K.., Ed, 



(») Coates V. Stepheiis, 2 M. & 1862, p. 523. 

 Eob. 157. 



