274 
REVIEW. — MOORCROFT’S TRAVELS. 
have recently been placed in our hands — bear within them ample 
testimony of the appliance of the same talent and energy in a 
sphere of research which, if not altogether alien to his professional 
pursuits, was at least sufficiently different from them to call for 
something beyond the mere flexibility and power of an ordinary 
mind. 
After seceding from the joint-professorship, leaving Coleman in 
sole possession thereof, Moorcroft opened an establishment on 
his own account in Oxford-street — the same which has since 
grown so extensive and flourishing under the no less universally 
known than respected name of FIELD. As a private practitioner, 
Moorcroft appears to have received the support of all the noble 
and opulent horse characters of his day ; and was, without doubt, 
in the road to fame as well as wealth. On this road, however, he 
was arrested by a handsome offer from the East India Company 
to embark for Hindustan ; and thither he immediately went in the 
lucrative and elevated situation of superintendent of the Com- 
pany’s studs. In this commanding station his chief duties became 
that of improving the native breeds of Indian horses. To a great 
extent he effected this by procuring the best stock the country 
around him afforded. At length, however, he felt the necessity of 
cross — of mingling foreign blood with the indigenous; and he 
became desirous, in order to bring this about with blood such as 
no other part of the world could afford him, of revisiting his native 
country. To this expedition the Company refused assent : the 
consequence was he was left to his Indian resources. Then it was 
that Moorcroft meditated travelling into the Himalayan provinces. 
Unexplored as these mountainous regions remained, he felt on that 
account the more anxious for such a trip; and he was joined in 
this spirit of research and adventure by a young, warm-hearted, 
talented friend, by the name of Trebeck. It was a bold and 
hazardous enterprise; but the minds of both our heroes were 
made up to it, little dreaming, poor fellows! that both of them 
would have to leave behind them their 
“ Stiffened corses, 
Stretched out and bleaching in the Himalayan blast.” 
The annexed biographical sketch of Mr. Moorcroft, from the 
pen of Mr. Wilson, the compiler of these volumes, will serve to 
fill a void in veterinary records ; at the same time that it can 
hardly fail to prove an acceptable morceau to those who desire 
some acquaintance with the memory of a man who was, if not the 
very first, one of the first to drag our degraded art into notice, and 
give it something like such a form and rank as it has since shewn 
itself deserving of ; though it may not, as yet even, to our full 
satisfaction, been able to attain thereunto. 
