THE ANIMAL CREATION. 161 



were so entirely bereft of tail, as to present an 

 exhibition disgusting in the extreme. Simple 

 farmers and waggoners had been choused out 

 of their common sense, and taught to believe 

 that such a privation added strength to the 

 general system ; just as some unknowing ones 

 of the present day fancy that the pruning 

 knife produces additional growth in those 

 branches which it spares. This docking pes- 

 tilence (I allude to the custom of removing the 

 whole of the tail) once raged throughout our 

 island ; and you would have thought that Dame 

 Nature herself had taken smittle, as we say in 

 Yorkshire ; for I knew a farmer's mare in the 

 county of Durham, about the year 1794, that 

 produced three foals successively without any 

 tail at all. 



I once thought that I could befriend the 

 valuable animal on which I am writing, by 

 allowing him the full quantity of tail which 

 nature had given to him ; and having, at that 

 time, two fine steeds only recently broken in, 

 I gave orders that they should not be deprived 

 of their tails. But I gained nothing in the 

 end. People stared at me as I rode quietly 

 along. One said, if he possessed that capital 



M 



