484 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
soldiers might thereby learn to endure and enact like hard- 
ships and expedients in case necessity should at any time call 
on them so to do, we, as veterinarians, and as military 
veterinarians especially, feel ourselves invited, on an occa- 
sion like this, to say, if we have anything by way of sug- 
gestion for alteration and improvement in our own depart- 
ment, to offer in case another encampment should be 
ordered or demanded of us. The piquet posts and ropes 
certainly proved objectionable, as well on account of their 
shortness, as from the liberty of head they afforded the animal, 
and consequent facility with which he was able to turn his 
croup round and kick at his neighbour. The cross-rafter 
went greatly to prevent all this. It is notorious enough that, 
unless a horse can get his head at liberty, he has not the 
power of doing much mischief with his heels ; and so it was, by 
confining his head, that the use of the rafter was chiefly shown. 
But rafters and supporters for them are not in all situations to 
be had ; neither can they so well on a march be carried with 
troops as piquet posts and cords can, therefore are not so 
convenient. To remedy this, we say, make the piquet posts 
doulle their present length, which would add very little to their 
portability, while they might serve so much the better as 
fastenings for the horses. The common notion of fastening 
a horse up is, that, so long as he is so tied that he cannot run 
away, it is sufficient ; but this is, as is well known to those 
accustomed to horses, a long way from being the sole requisite. 
Besides making the piquet posts longer, the rope running 
through them should be tarred, tar being especially obnoxious 
to horses, and so preventive of their knawing or licking them. 
In India, where the horses, from being most of them entire, 
are awful kickers, and where they require to have no stables, 
they do not piquet but jt ieg their horses to the ground. From 
the head-collar comes one, sometimes two long ropes, which are 
fastened to pegs in the ground in front of the horse ; while to 
each hind heel is fastened a simple sort of button or slip-knot 
hopple, from which come two long ropes, one from each leg, 
which are united into one, and by a single rope which is fixed 
to a peg inserted in the ground directly behind the horse : thus, 
by two or three pegs and two or three ropes, confining the 
horse, but with some range for his head and heels, in the open 
