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WARRANTY OF HORSES. 
This is assuredly a bad state of things, but it is one for 
which, I shall very likely be told, the profession of which I 
am myself a member is greatly to blame. If judges have 
erred in their conclusions, it will be said they have probably 
been led into those errors by such professional evidence as 
appeared to them to have most weight. It would be idle to 
deny that there is much truth in this, and it is not easy to 
furnish an excuse ; for, allowing a wide margin for that dif- 
ference of opinion for which doctors of all degrees — and I 
suppose horse-doctors amongst the number — have long been 
proverbial, much still remains to be explained. It must be 
borne in mind, however, that the Veterinary Art has not 
long been raised from the darkness and dirt of ignorance and 
empiricism, that her nomenclature still partakes more of the 
senseless jargon of the smithy and the stable than of the lan- 
guage of science, and that she has not yet demanded a very 
high amount of education from her votaries. Her progress 
is even now a continued struggle against prejudice, since a 
large portion of the agricultural community, on whom she is 
mainly dependent, still prefers to patronise the most ignorant 
pretenders. That a profession thus burthened and fettered 
should not always stand erect before the world need hardly 
excite our surprise. There is often an unpleasant respon- 
sibility attached to the examination of horses. All men are 
liable to err ; and men of limited experience, fearful that any- 
thing should escape observation, frequently in their anxiety 
to avoid blame are led to give a false importance to trifles. 
It is the vanity of a weak mind to fancy that the ability 
to find fault is necessarily a proof of superior knowledge. 
Others, and these a very different class of men, are frequently 
induced to reject horses as unsound merely out of respect, as 
it were, to the law. They know, for instance, that a splent 
has been held to be a sufficient cause of unsoundness, and 
they refuse to pass over even a splent, although they fully 
appreciate its insignificance. It is probably in deference to 
the opinion of Mr. Baron Parke, that a gentleman like 
Mr. Hales — for whose experience and abilities no difference 
of opinion can prevent me from entertaining a high degree of 
respect — is led to look thus seriously upon so trifling an 
affection as thrush of the hind feet. For my own part I 
cannot admit Mr. Baron Parke to be any authority on such 
a subject. From whatever cause it may arise, the extent 
to which this unwise and unjust rejection of horses on 
examination is carried by some veterinary surgeons, is hardly 
creditable to the profession, whilst the reasons assigned are 
sometimes perfectly ridiculous. Not long since my opinion 
