60 
VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE. 
and, from the peculiarity of his action, he suspected that the seat 
of lameness was the feet. He passed his hand down the near leg, 
and an enlargement was evident on the inside of that limb, below 
the knee. He then examined the feet: they were somewhat con- 
tracted, but not much so. On passing his hand round the coronets, 
he found that the cartilages, which should be yielding, were hard, 
and was convinced that some portions of them had been converted 
into bone. He was of opinion that this morbid structure was suf- 
ficient to account for the lameness. He considered the horse un- 
sound, both from the disease of the fore feet and of the hock. In 
his opinion he was unsound long before the 14th of July. The 
deposition of bone, he thought, had ceased: this was evident from 
no pain being evinced on pressing the parts, and the absence of 
other symptoms indicative of inflammation. If the inflammation 
runs high, cartilage can be converted into bone in a short period 
of time. He could not say how long the spavin had been formed, 
but it had evidently been there during several months. He judges 
of this from its size, the absence of pain, and its little apparent 
effect on the action of the leg. 
Lord Abinger . — Spavin may exist without occasioning detect- 
able lameness, but the natural function of the joint must be impaired 
by it. The hock is a peculiarly complicated joint. There are ten 
bones entering into its formation, but only two of these are moved 
upon each other by the action of the muscles in progression, the 
others being intended to yield to the weight thrown upon them, 
and thereby act as cushions to the limb. It is this elastic move- 
ment which is destroyed by spavin, and the horse thereby, if not 
positively lame, is rendered more liable to become so. Spavin 
constitutes unsoundness, for it is a diseased structure, which 
always interferes with the natural action of the part. Cases are 
not unfrequent in which spavin renders a horse almost useless. 
The form of the feet was not such that he should have been 
induced to reject the horse if he had not been lame. 
Cross-examined . — He was certainly a fine and handsome horse, 
but he did not consider that he had very high action. He both 
walked and trotted him. The bony deposit on the coronets had 
been there for a considerable length of time. It could have been 
discovered on the 24th of June. He thinks that it must have been 
there some weeks, for all inflammation was gone. It was on the 
front part of the cartilage, and a portion of the cartilage also be- 
neath the crust he thinks must have become ossified from the rigid 
state of it above. Both feet were somewhat hotter than they 
should be. There could never be afterwards an absorption of 
bone and a deposition of cartilage in its place. Any person of skill, 
he thinks, might have discovered it. The whole of the cartilage 
