SPAVIN. 98% 
their fullest use before their structure is confirmed. Racers go into 
training when one year old. Carriage horses, omnibus machiners, cart 
horses, nags, roadsters, may-birds, and park hacks generally come into 
work about the third year, The animal, however, does not cut all its 
teeth till the completion of its fifth birthday. It requires to look upon 
eight seasons before its adult period is entered upon; and yet at the 
third year, or before that period, it is put to such work as only a horse 
can or does perform. 
When the horse was designed to be only matured, the frivolity of 
mankind pronounces the creature to be aged. The life is, indeed, gener- 
ally worthless before the eighth year is entered upon. The young flesh, 
bones, and sinews, long before that time arrives, are made the seats of 
poignant diseases. Work, not in the first instance laborious, but sud- 
den and energetic beyond what the frame of the young horse can endure, 
casts it out of the gentleman’s stable. Once removed from that place, 
its descent is rapid. From the carriage to the cab is a leap often cleared 
in equine history; but every change adds misery to its lot. It fares 
worse, lodges worse, and works harder with every new proprietor, till 
at length, as its years and wretchedness accumulate, Nature interposes 
and takes the sufferer to herself. 
At the head of this article stands an engraving of the mildest form 
of reward which docility reaps by service unto cruelty. When will this 
land, which so loudly boasts its Christianity, apply in its fullness and its 
strength the sacred maxim—‘“ Do unto others as you would others should 
do unto you”? When will churchmen teach that the religion which does 
not enlarge the heart toward every breathing life upon the earth, is un- 
worthy of the Christian title? Men who would rage to hear their faith 
called in question, nevertheless feel no shame when they urge the young 
steed to that act which probably will cripple the animal for the short 
remainder of its life. 
Spavin, splint, or ring-bone are no more the legitimate consequences 
of equine existence, than nodes and anchylosis are the natural inherit- 
ances of human beings; yet what would the world look like, if men 
had their motions impeded and their joints firmly locked by bony 
deposits in anything like the proportion which such misfortunes are 
witnessed in the inferior life? The most useful, the most trusting, and 
the most joyous of animals is the one toward which man acts as though 
his study was to abuse the authority intrusted to him. Its utility lies 
in its legs; its play also is a canter; but before its body is set, its limbs 
are disabled. Kindness can subdue the creature, which, however, is 
never taken out of its prison without the whip; it is treated as a thing 
without feeling: but its body is not more impressible to brutality than 
