OPERATIONS. 439 
is embodied in a horse’s attachment. There is not among created beings 
one which has so large a sympathy; the horse must attach itself to 
something ; to love seems essential to its being. The stable in which it 
is captive the patient prisoner learns to regard, as it were, a palace. 
The pace is always more willing when returning to captivity; freedom 
has no charm; the field has no allurement to the horse which has lived 
any time in the most crimped, confined, and uncomfortable of stalls. It 
will quit the spring grass to be fastened once more in the place to which 
it has been accustomed and has grown attached. 
Then, however much removed from itself, it must pour the richest of 
its affections on some animal, should man, in pride, refuse to accept the 
offering. Creatures the most opposite have been the horse’s favorite. 
How often do we hear of the liking formed between a goat, a dog, a cat, 
and the horse! Love has a strange freemasonry of its own; how else 
can we account for the larger creature being*able to make its longing 
understood by the smaller life? There may, however, be between ani- 
mals some substitute for language; but we can hardly suppose any rec- 
ognized signs exist between birds and the equine species. Yet a famous 
animal-painter had a pony which formed a violent and lasting affection 
for a bantam cock. These two used to march side by side up and down 
the field in which the larger animal was confined; for so very expansive 
is the horse’s love that it will embrace not only its abode, but some life, 
however distant apparently from its own. 
The voice of the person who is accustomed to groom and feed the 
animal, if he has been only ordinarily humane in the performance of his 
office, will at all times reassure the beating heart of a prostrated horse. 
But vast injustice to the animal’s better qualities is done by the mode 
of casting it. It is violently jerked off its legs; by a sudden pull it is 
thrown “with a burster” upon its side. There it struggles. If mastery 
sides with the animal, then let the men be speedy in their flight. The 
quadruped, in its fear, designs no harm to any person. It means only to 
escape from the terrible danger which encompasses it. Still, it is re- 
gardless in its alarm, and may do more injury than the most evil inten- 
tion could accomplish. There is an engraving of the method of casting 
horses commencing this chapter. Let the capable reader imagine the 
effect produced upon the timid quadruped when it is violently flung upon 
the earth with a sound well denominated “a burster.” 
The horse is much better made to lie down gently, after the method 
adopted by Mr. Rarey. Half, and far more than half, the terror excited 
by an operation may thus be avoided. The confusion and bustle, con- 
joined with violence, which naturally attend “casting,” must make a 
lasting impression upon the retentive mind of the animal, and, we may 
