302 The Report of the Royal Commission on Horse-Breeding. 
suggested as possibilities, were very rightly omitted from the 
final Schedule. A horse will not be rejected for curbs on good 
hocks, and we shall trust to the judges not to pick bad-footed, 
curby-hocked horses for premiums. On good hocks curbs are 
quite immaterial ; so are splints, as regards the present purposes 
of the Commission ; whilst weak feet are so much a question 
of opinion and degree that they can hardly be satisfactorily 
defined. Evidently we must have the best judges that can be 
got, and trust make-and-shape and action to them ; and with 
this express Schedule we can hardly go wrong now over the 
veterinary examination. 
Shakespeare speaks in " King Lear " of the madness of trust- 
ing in the tameness of a wolf, a boy's love, or a horse's health ; 
he was certainly right about the last. If men and women were 
as unsound as horses seem to be, we could not get along at all. 
"Horses," said Mr. Daly in this connection, " are extraordinary 
things " ; and after hearing the evidence relating to their ail- 
ments, and to their capacity for ailments, one cannot but agree 
with him. 
VI. Roaring. 
Roaring properly belongs to the foregoing heading ; but we 
have heard so much about it that I have given it a heading to 
itself. Mr. Dawson 37 told us that he thinks all horses become 
roarers to a certain extent after a certain age, ten years being 
the age suggested ; and as he thinks a roarer almost universally 
transmits the evil to his stock, we are tempted to ask, " Who, 
then, shall be saved ? " But what, I take it, Mr. Dawson really 
means is, that a roarer-bred pernicious roarer shows himself to 
be so at three years old; and I do not think he attached the 
same importance to roaring if it is developed at six, or eight, 
or ten years old ; it is then more likely to be the result of a 
severe cold, or of stupid stable management. Mr. Porter 38 
takes much the same view. He thinks that two-thirds, or even 
three-fourths of our stallions go roarers from the latter cause — 
i.e., stupid stable management — and he draws attention to the 
danger of certain strains of blood which are sure to produce 
roarers. The following information is noteworthy, coming from 
Mr. Porter : — " I think the chief cause of roaring is early foaling. 
I do not think you would find a horse foaled in May a roarer. 
J think, if you were to take all the racehorses in England foaled 
in that month, you would not find a single roarer. I think it 
is the early forcing ; the foal is born at a time when he is 
exposed to climatic influences that affect him perpetually." 39 
3 ' 21159. 
3 " 1508. 
w M72-3. 
