544 
BLOODSTONE AND THE NEW STAKES. 
validity of the veterinary art. Had not the attestation of facts, 
together with the production of a record of them made at the time 
of their occurrence, and by parties whose credit in matters of that 
kind stood high, have convinced the jury of the unrighteousness 
of the cause of the plaintiff, the whole weight of the case must 
have descended upon the shoulders of the veterinary gentlemen 
engaged on the side of the defence ; but whether, arrayed in their 
professional coats of mail, carefully woven as those coats have 
been by the hands of science, and worked doubly strong by the 
hands of experience, these gentlemen would, to an un-equestrian 
jury, have been able to exhibit the face of Nature in its true light, — 
to demonstrate to them that the vital operations, although not carried 
on precisely alike in any two individuals, are, for all that, unerring 
in their results, and on no occasions so deviating as to lead us 
astray in our calculations of age by a whole year , — I repeat, un- 
less all this could have been satisfactorily proved to the minds of 
twelve persons, perhaps not one among them a horse- man, lower 
the reputation of the British turf must have sunk, as nothing could 
have been regarded as the opinions about horses’ ages of vete- 
rinary surgeons. We will not say the phalanx of veterinary 
talent the defendant secured on the occasion out of the metro- 
polis could not have sustained this heavy onus probandi, — we well 
know they would have manfully fought under the pressure of it ; 
we will, however, congratulate both them and ourselves, that there 
was no need of putting their backs to the trial. The fate of the 
day was turned by the evidence and Book of Entry of the Messrs. 
Gibson; and, to crown all, at the very nick of time up came Messrs. 
Field and Parry* with their reserve of professional aid, and thus 
was victory surely and gloriously achieved. 
The cases of Running Rein and Bloodstone w r ere substantially — 
nay, circumstantially and strikingly — similar : in both, the horses 
* Of the six veterinary surgeons subpoenaed by the defendant, viz. Messrs. 
Field, Parry, Percivall, Siddall, Spooner, and Turner, only the first two were 
called to give evidence, they having seen the colt at Ascot the day after he 
won his race, and pronounced him then three years old. Had there been 
need, however, of any further professional evidence, the other four gentlemen 
were quite ready unhesitatingly to declare that the colt possessed a fully 
formed three-year-old mouth. 
