THE STATE OF TIIE VETERINARY ART. 
639 
or had a precarious existence maintained a few years longer by 
subscription ; carriages were put down, and horses for pleasure 
reduced in number. Railways now come into play, and sink the 
horse world in lower estimation still. The stage coach, which 
years of experience had brought to such perfection that a person 
could travel by it his hundred miles between breakfast and 
dinner, is driven off the road by the steam coach, whose capabili- 
ties of speed tell as four and five to one, and with which by horse- 
flesh there is no competing. The consequences are that hundreds 
of excellent horses are thrown out of work and sold, and the towns 
and inns upon the lines of the great roads, whose living depended 
upon the coach traffic, are all but or quite ruined. It is idle to 
assert that the same number of horses still find employ in the 
short coaches and omnibuses : such concerns can never afford to 
give any thing like remunerating prices for their horses, and are 
too poor and ephemeral to prove beneficial to veterinarians, or 
even to respectable saddlers or coach makers ; and although the 
coaching business did not do any very great deal in a general 
way for the veterinary practitioner, still there were many coach 
proprietors of late who found it to their interest to have their 
horses well attended to, the loss of whose custom must be severely 
felt. 
From the causes stated, great general depression has taken 
place in the horse world, and this, as well as by others, has been 
sorely felt by veterinary surgeons. Few good veterinary practices 
yield at the present day what they formerly did ; indeed, there are 
some, we are grieved to be forced to add, which have become so 
unproductive as hardly to support their holders, and in more situ- 
ations than one to have induced them to migrate to other locali- 
ties. Thus the strange and unwelcome fact becomes forced upon 
us, that there are still living in the profession those who have 
seen it rise, flourish, and decline. Decline , did we say? No! 
this is not our meaning; we mean, suffer for a time the depression 
common to other professional and mercantile concerns. 
To what the revolution which has of late taken place in the 
horse world is to lead, whether this great country be doomed 
to lose its horse celebrity, or whether, through the infusion of 
fresh energy into our great horse patrons, or through some fresh 
