68 LAMPAS. 
food before all their teeth are cut; shedding the primary molars is 
especially painful; of course, during such a process, the animal en- 
deavors to feed as little as possible. A refusal to eat is the groom’s 
strongest proof that lampas is present. But, putting the teeth on one 
side, would it be surprising if a change of food and a total change of 
habit in a young creature were occasionally attended with temporary 
loss of appetite? Is ‘“‘lampas” necessary to account for so very prob- 
able a consequence? The writer has often tried to explain this to stable 
servants; but the very ignorant are generally the very prejudiced. 
While the author has been talking, the groom has been smiling; looking 
most provokingly knowing, and every now and then shaking his head, as 
much as to say, ‘ah, my Jad, you can’t gammon me!” 
Young horses are taken from the field to the stable, from juicy grass 
to dry fodder, from natural exercise to constrained stagnation. Is it so 
very astonishing if, under such a total change of life, the digestion be- 
comes sometimes deranged before the system is altogether adapted to its 
new situation? Is it matter for alarm should the appetite occasionally 
fail? But grooms, like most of their class, regard eating as the only 
proof of health. They have no confidence in abstinence; they cannot 
comprehend any loss of appetite; they love to see the “beards wag- 
ging,” and reckon the state of body by the amount of provision con- 
sumed. 
The prejudices of ignorance are subjects for pity; the slothfulness of 
the better educated merits reproba- 
tion. The groom always gets the 
master’s sanction before he takes a 
horse to be cruelly tortured for an 
imaginary disease. Into the hands 
of the proprietor has a Higher 
Power intrusted the life of His 
creature; and surely there shall be 
BURNING FOR LAMPAS. demanded a strict account of the 
stewardship. It can be no excuse 
for permitting the living sensation to be abused, that a groom asked and 
the master willingly left his duties to another. Man has no business to 
collect breathing life about him and then to neglect it. Every human 
being who has a servant, a beast or a bird about his homestead, has no 
right to rest content with the assertions of his dependents. For every 
benefit he is bound to confer some kindness. His liberality should tes- 
tify to his superiority; but he obviously betrays his trust and abuses the 
blessings of Providence when he permits the welfare of the creatures, 
dependent on him, to be controlled by any judgment but his own. 
