6 
NATURE NOTES 
sumer. It could all be avoided. How ? By simply encourag- 
ing those who rear stock for sale, to do what is done, I think, in 
all Continental countries, certainly in Norway, in Switzerland, 
and in Austria and Bavaria, namely, train the calves to the use 
of the halter, and so get all grown cattle to follow a hand that 
leads, rather than fly from a stick that drives. 
Next, I am extremely anxious that we in Britain should lay 
to heart one of the lessons of this terrible war in South Africa. 
Our losses in horse flesh have been enormous. More than 
100,000 horses, I am assured, have perished. One of the con- 
tributory causes was that vicious habic and cruel fashion of 
docking the horses’ tails. It is mercifully forbidden in the army, 
and so the army horses proper could defend themselves from 
what is the chief scourge of an African campaign, the plague of 
flies. But just as our volunteers and yeomen were called for, 
so were volunteer mounts and yeomen mounts called for. 
Owing to the foolish fashion of horse docking, thousands of 
horses had to go to the war without their natural protection, 
and the agonies that were added to them for want of it may be 
imagined. 
You doubtless remember that one of the truest sportsmen of 
our generation, one too, of the gentlest-hearted gentlemen it has 
ever been my lot to know, the late Duke of Westminster, did a 
few years ago move at the Royal Agricultural Society’s meeting 
“ that in future no foals with docked tails should be entered 
for the Society’s county meetings.” Sir Nigel Kingscote, Prince 
Christian and others, vigorously supported him, but the fashion 
of the day was too strong for them and the Royal Agricultural 
Society decided against the Duke’s sensible and humane pro- 
position. I think I am right in saying that Lord Lonsdale 
absolutely disallowed the docking of horses’ tails when he was 
Master of his Hunt. The custom is as useless as it is cruel, 
and, as this war has helped to prove, it is a dead loss to the 
nation. I know the stock arguments in favour of horse docking, 
but to those who say that the natural tail is inconvenient for 
harness horses I answer, “ Go to Russia.” We shall not easily 
match the skill of a Russian coachman, and I never saw a 
docked tail in all that splendid coronation pageant of the Czar 
at Moscow, nor in all St. Petersburg. I have more faith in the 
wise Creator of the horse than to believe that there has been 
any mistake about the number of caudal vertebrae necessary for 
the animal’s well-being and comfort. 
This brings me to my concluding appeal for mercy to our 
dumb friends. More than 100,000 horses have died for Great 
Britain and the Empire during this past year. We shall have 
monuments to our brave soldiers who come not home again. 
How shall we build a monument to those brave horses that 
have perished, horses that dropped stone dead as they pushed 
forward or fell in the. furious battle-hail ? We will build their 
monument and the monument of our debt to them by an appeal 
