238 REVIEW— THE HORSE IN HEALTH AND DISEASE. 
till thirty. The natural term is probably between twenty-five 
and thirty years. A faint and uncertain guide is found in the 
register of the ages of some of our most celebrated racing stallions, 
recollecting, however, that several of them were destroyed on 
becoming useless for the purposes of the turf. The united ages 
of 93 of these horses amounted to 2005 years, or rather better 
than 2H years each horse. Professor Pessina estimates it at 
30 years; Mr. Percivall rather higher; and Cuvier from 30 
to 40. Instances are frequently noticed of horses attaining the 
age of 35, and Mr. Blaine mentions one which was attached 
to the Woolwich riding-school as being 40. Mr. Titchmarsh, 
of Kneesworth, Cambridgeshire, had a gcey pony which died in 
February, 1840, at the great age of 41 years. Culley, in his 
work on Live Stock, &c., mentions a horse which had received a 
ball in its neck at the battle of Preston (1715), and yet lived until 
the year 1758: if it be allowed to have been four or five years 
old at the time of receiving its wound, it must have been nearly 
48 years old at its death. Pliny remarks that many horses attain 
the age of 50 years, but that mares do not live quite so long. It 
is most confidently asserted that a barge-horse belonging to the 
Mersey and lrwell Canal Company attained the surprising term 
of sixty-two years. The Athenian chronicles record that a mule 
had reached the age of eighty; and to terminate the list of equine 
Methuselahs, Rankin, in his History of France (vol. ii, p. 315), 
cites Flodart, an old historian of that country, who asserts that, in 
the year 931, a horse had reached the truly patriarchal age of 
100 years.” Pp. 141, 142. 
Chap. VI, “ Veterinary Jurisprudence .” 
!< We must attach to the word ‘soundness’ nothing more than 
a present and prospective fitness or capability of performing duty, 
without regard to age, blemishes, or conformation. A horse is 
sound, provided there he not a total or partial loss of function, pre- 
venting, or calculated to prevent, the animal from performing the 
ordinary duties of a horse of his class. The principal question to 
be taken into consideration is, — Does or will the deviation from 
the normal condition incapacitate the animal from rendering to the 
owner the usually required quantity of labour, at the same time 
bearing in mind the order or class to which the horse belongs ? 
for there are some functional deviations from the natural standard 
constituting unsoundness or unfitness for one description of employ- 
ment or labour, which would not be held objective o^detrimental 
in other kinds. For example, a modification of structure and func- 
tion which would unfit a race-horse, a hunter, a hack, a charger, or 
