348 
CURSORY REMARKS ON 
when given to horses in strong work. It forms part of the al- 
terative balls I so long used in my own stable with success, and 
which were not disapproved of by any of the profession ; but, on 
shewing the recipe to Mr. Cuney, of Nottingham, in the late Sir 
Harry Goodricke’s stables at Melton, I remember his saying, that 
he thought the balls would be better without the nitre. A friend 
of mine, who, perhaps — barring a few — has had as many foals 
dropped in his paddocks as any other man in England, always 
gives his mares a dose of nitre in a pint of gruel after foaling, 
which he considers a certain preventive of puerperal fever. 
P. 73, Wood-evil and Moor-ill. — When I was a boy, my 
father and his neighbours lost weaning-calves, for several succes- 
sive years, from a disease which I have never met with since, 
vulgarly called “ planet struck. ” They were seized all at 
once with paralysis of the hinder quarters, and, on the carcass 
being opened, the blood about the heart was found to be nearly 
coal black, and the stench from it most offensive. 
Page 84, Case of Fracture. — The neat cure of the cattle 
jobber’s nag, by Mr. Clay worth, of Spilsby, is one proof, amongst 
many, of the value of your profession in the country. Under the 
old regime the case would have been a hopeless one. But the 
word “ fracture” leads me to remark, that I knew a country 
plate horse whose leg had been fractured when a colt — Sir Wat- 
kin Williams Wynne’s broken-legged Taffy — and he stood quite 
sound upon it. It was from recollection of this circumstance that 
I have been induced to give a sketch of Mr. Percivall’s sling, 
in the work I have just written on “breeding, rearing, and 
training the race-horse,” for the use of the French Jockey Club. 
Such an instance as the one I have alluded to, viz. of a horse 
racing after a fracture of the shank-bone, might not occur again 
in a thousand years ; but in a young racing country, like France, 
the means of curing fractures are doubly valuable, by reason of 
the trouble and expense of importing good blood ; and it is evi- 
dent that a mare might not be the worse, as a brood mare, from 
having fractured a limb in her colthood. But in other casualties 
than fractures, the use of this sling is the first step towards cure. 
Page 88, Mr. Gloag’s improved Hobbles. — Of hobbles for 
throwing horses, and securing them under operation, I have no- 
thing more to say than that I hail all improvements of this na- 
ture with satisfaction, especially so when tending in anywise to 
lessen animal suffering. For the occasional use of hobbles in the 
stable, when horses are shut up, I have always been a great ad- 
vocate ; I mean with such as are given to attempt to roll on 
their backs, which can always be discovered by their clothing. 
Ten minutes more would have caused the death of a capital mare 
