DOCKING [_HOESES. 669 



the dock being removed, will cause such a tail to be out of all pro- 

 portion shorter than it would have been, had the animal not been 

 docked; supposing that the hairs were allowed to grow to their 

 full extent in both cases. 



Some persons consider that a horse's tail materially helps to 

 balance him when he is turning; but this action on the part of 

 the tail is so slight, that it need not be taken into account for 

 practical purposes. 



HISTORY OF DOCKING.— The chief mutilations which have 

 been practised on horses in this country for fashionable purposes, 

 are cropping their ears, nicking their tails, and docking. Shake- 

 speare, in " King Henry the Fourth," makes Hotspur declare that 

 his roan "crop-ear" horse shall be his throne. This practice, 

 which was similar to that of cropping the ears of bull terriers, has 

 happily become extinct. Nicking is performed as a rule only on 

 Hackneys, and consists in the division of the muscles (those of 

 the under surface of the tail) which depress the tail. Hence, when 

 the depressor (sacro-coccygeal) muscles are cut at right angles to 

 their direction, the animal is obliged to constantly hold his " flag " 

 aloft. This brutal operation appears to have been introduced by 

 Lord Cadogan, who was Marlborough's Quarter Master General in 

 the Low Countries in 1701. Docking is the term applied to the 

 amputation of a portion of a horse's tail ; and hanging, to the 

 cutting of the hairs of the tail in such a manner, that their ends 

 will form a flat surface which will be more or less horizontal when 

 the animal is in movement. Docking, which is an old operation, 

 was revived in England during the 15th century. Lafeu, in 

 Shakespeare's " All's WeU that Ends Well," speaks of a " bay 

 Curtal." During the reign of Charles I. there was little or no 

 docking, which became fashionable in the reign of Charles II. 

 During the latter half of the 18th century, all hunters were docked, 

 and many of them were nicked ; and cart-horses were docked close 

 to the body, so as to give them a " bung-tail," which received that 

 name on account of the resemblance which the stump bore to the 

 bung of a barrel ! The ignorant people of those days thought 

 that this extreme shortening of the tail strengthened the animal's 

 spine ! Leech, who was a particularly accurate artist, gave un- 

 decked tails to all the hunters depicted in " Mr. Sponge " (1852), 

 with the exception of the cob ridden by Captain Greatgun, R.N. 

 Docking hunters went out of fashion about the year 1830, and 

 was not revived until the early seventies. " Nimrod," when writing 

 in 1824, on " Hunters," says : " All horses used for pleasure are 

 docked," but " Cecil," when editing a new edition of that book in 

 1854, states in a foot-note that "this operation has now become 



