CURSORY REMARKS. 
4 23 
which I never had an opportunity of asking for again ; and he 
will much oblige me, should this meet his eye, if he will return 
it to your care. 
The word wart, in this discussion, reminds me that I once 
saw a very large wart taken off the belly of a horse, in what I 
considered a neat and effectual way, but no doubt known to the 
profession. The operator dipped some woollen yarn, four double, 
into aqua fortis, and sawed it smoothly off. I had no opportunity 
of knowing whether it ever grew again. Nothing makes a horse 
dangerous in the stable so much as a sore wart, which I always 
previously had seen removed by the knife. 
Page 134. — I agree with Mr. Goodwin on two material points, 
in his paper on Castration, namely, the period of the year for 
performing the operation, and the necessity of previous prepa- 
ration, by physic, &c. The President, however, doubts a horse 
that had never covered bleeding to death from castration ; but 
I can give him one fatal instance in a Belisarius colt, that had 
never covered, which I sold, after his being beat at Chester, to 
the celebrated Colonel Wardle. “ I will make him run straight,” 
said the colonel : — he had bolted on his last sweat, and the late 
Tom Carr, who rode him, said he could not make him run 
straight in his race. “ I will have him cut to-morrow u Surely 
not,” was my remark, “ without a preparation.” However, cut 
he was, and dead he was in a very few hours, from hemorrhage. 
I think castration, and also non-castration of horses, subjects of 
vast interest. In the first place, I am inclined to believe that in 
slow, heavy work, four entire horses would do the work of five 
geldings — no mean consideration. Then, again, how vigorous 
and brisk is the action of the rampant stallion to that of the 
emasculated animal which has been deprived of half his vital 
energy by the unsparing hand of man! For example, observe the 
public carriage and cart-horses on the great roads in France, 
and especially those leading from the metropolis of the country. 
How little they seem to value their work ! How much, indeed, 
do they appear to be above it! It is objected to stallions for 
such purposes in England, that they would be unmanageable; 
but why are they not so in France? Some of them, it is true, 
are obliged to be muzzled on the road ; but when kept within 
view of each other in the stable, they are equally quiet as any 
other description of horse. Some beautiful animals of this sort 
arrive in Calais every week with champaign, and I have made 
it my business to watch them. 
But it is as regards the race-horse and the hunter that most 
interest attaches to the subject of castration, as likewise to the 
period of life at which it should be performed. I admit that 
