22 
VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE. 
in every direction, the owner could get no tidings of them 
until within the last few days, when he discovered them at 
the defendant’s shop. 
The defendant’s answer was, that he had purchased the 
birds in the usual way, and it was impossible for any fancier 
or the best judge to identify such property, particularly as 
they must alter very much in their appearance in the moult- 
ing season : in addition to which, he had kept them ever since 
publicly in his shop for sale. 
The complainant maintained, that although birds changed 
plumage to a certain extent at such a time, he, or any other 
amateur, could easily distinguish any bird he had reared. 
After a lengthened discussion they were ordered to be 
given up. 
HORRIBLE TREATMENT OF A HORSE. 
The following statement has been forwarded to us by 
the secretary to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals. Our readers will, of course, suspend their judg- 
ment until the case has been heard : — “ On the Thursday 
before, a bay cob, the property of Mr. Deane, of the Crown 
Hotel, Erith, was sent to a brewer named Rowlands, 
in the same village, on trial, with a view to a sale, if the 
animal suited the work. On the Friday it was tried, when 
it refused to go round the machine used for raising the water 
for the purposes of the brewery. It was then beaten most 
savagely ; when, finding that useless, the human brutes con- 
cerned procured a quantity of straw, and one of them coolly 
struck a lucifer-match and lighted a fire under the belly of 
the animal, and burnt it shockingly. A rope was’ afterwards 
tied round the neck of the cob, and, being fastened to another 
horse, it w 7 as drawn out of the place in which it had been so 
shamefully tortured, and turned out into a field, where it 
remained without any protection from the weather or atten- 
tion to its wounds, until Sunday, the 26th, w hen it w r as re- 
turned to Mr. Deane in a most pitiable condition from the 
treatment it had received. A great number of persons have 
seen the animal, and expressed their indignation and disgust 
at the conduct of the persons concerned, who, fortunately, 
will not escape exposure and punishment. The case has 
been investigated by Mr. Thomas, the secretary of the Royal 
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, who, on 
Saturday last, attended before the magistrates at Dartford, 
and obtained summonses against Benjamin Rowlands, Frede- 
