PANICS AMONG HORSES. 
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severed the mass. The rest were broken up ; 300 ran into a 
large enclosure in a farm, but some of the more young and 
adventurous madcaps did not stop or were not caught till 
they had run above 100 miles. Some were staked, and some 
were lamed, and some were obliged to he shot, but the 
casualties in all were very few.” 
The colonel then alludes to the "method of securing the 
horses while in the field, and it will be seen by the older 
army veterinary surgeons that it does not differ much, if any- 
thing, from that followed by our own troops some ten years 
ago. He says : 
“ This question of picketing deserves to be considered. 
Russian cavalry horses are picketed by the head alone. They 
have no heel ropes. Two vertical stakes are driven into the 
ground, a rope is stretched between them, and to that rope 
the horses are picketed with other ropes (not with chains) in 
batches of thirty between each pair of stakes. Two or three 
of these batches facing two or three similar batches (the 
horses facing each other) form the front and rear rank of a 
squadron. This picketing is found quite sufficient. The 
horses never break away. The heel ropes are never used ; 
they are not wanted, for the horses never kick ; a kicking 
horse would not be kept in a regiment.” * 
Some sensible remarks follow on the kindly and familiar 
manner in which horses are treated by the Russian soldiers 
— treatment which, no doubt, has everything to do with their 
remarkably good behaviour on the picket lines. My experi- 
ence of the treatment to which the British troop horse is 
subject is very different to that here indicated. As a rule, 
our soldiers are not kind to their horses, but, on the contrary, 
only too frequently treat them with altogether unnecessary 
harshness and cruelty. It is but seldom that one observes 
any real attachment between man and horse, or any great 
* We learn from the Times correspondent, present in Hungary during the 
recent manoeuvres there, that the Honved, or Hungarian hussar horses, have, 
the fore legs coupled together; to this coupling there is a short rope 
fastened to the ground by a peg, so that even if the latter be drawn the 
horse cannot get away with any great degree of speed. This coupling of 
the fore legs is the usual method adopted in the pastures ; it does not strain 
the legs or distress the horse in lying down or getting up, while it secures 
him most effectually. 
Whatever way of attaching army horses in the field is adopted, it should 
be one to which the animals are accustomed in their stables. To tie horses 
by their heads while kept in stables for eleven months in the year, and then 
suddenly to picket them out in the open, where they have every inducement 
to be restless and seek their liberty, only secured through the medium of a 
narrow strap and a short chain by one of the front pasterns, is surely as 
unreasonable as it is injudicious. 
