98 
THE VETERINARIAN, FEBRUARY 1, 1846. 
Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat. — Cicero. 
While gentlemen of the law with good reason denounce “horse 
causes” for their notorious disregard of truth and confliction of evi- 
dence, veterinary surgeons are not without, reason for feeling dis- 
satisfied at the lack of knowledge counsel are apt to betray on 
horse concerns in general. It is quite proverbial how little “ doc- 
tors, parsons, and lawyers, know about horses;” on occasions, 
however, where actions at law come to be brought involving points 
altogether veterinary in their character, and dependent upon their 
issue mainly upon the shewing of advocates whose business it is 
to sift and explain these points, we do think that the functionaries 
of the law are in duty bound to enter court prepared for their work. 
It is all very well jokingly to talk about “ the glorious uncertainty 
of the law;” but to a man who is impelled into its meshes through 
a conviction of the soundness and justice of his cause, what can be 
more galling than to find himself vanquished, not so much by the 
audacious and profligate character of the evidence opposed to him — 
for that is very apt to over-ride and defeat its own object — as by 
the lamentable want of knowledge of the true bearings of the case 
manifested by his legal representatives 1 Disappointed and vexed 
at the result, he leaves the court of law muttering to himself — 
“ I had gained more had I pleaded my own cause than by com- 
mitting it to hands so superficially informed, so one-sidedly pre- 
pared on the subject.” 
The foregoing observations, suggested to us by the perusal of 
former horse-causes, have been revived in our mind by the one 
of Collins v. Rodway, an account of which appears in our Num- 
ber for the present month — a trial involving decision upon a point 
of vast importance to the veterinary world, and one of which, for 
that reason, we have been at some pains to get the particulars. 
Nothing could be more masterly, a more clever and complete ex- 
position of the law of the case, than Mr. Jervis’s “apprehension” that 
