512 COMPARATIVE DISEASES AND LAMENESSES 
else did it, I left it off, and my horses do quite as well with- 
out it.” “ Have you lost any horses from disease V* renewed I ; 
“Not one ; only one has gone blind ; and his eyes were sus- 
picious when I bought him,” — was his answer. Now, what is 
the talisman here 1 how is it that out of four druggists in Calais, 
only one can make up a dose of purging physic for a horse, and 
this because he is the one chiefly employed by the English resi- 
dents'? -I answer, it is the wheat-straw, and the bran, or the dread- 
fully (apparently so at least) bad system of making the hay in 
France, that cause a diminution of disease in horses in this part of 
the world.* 
But I must return to the foot. I see no corns in France, and, 
what is more extraordinary, I can hear of none. “ Have your 
horses corns ]”t is a question I have put to many Frenchmen ; 
and have only created their surprise by asking it. Indeed, one 
told me he was not aware horses ever had corns : and my “ me- 
chanical friend” informs me, that, when he arrived from England, 
two years ago, three of his four horses had corns; but they have all 
disappeared by the charm of the French blacksmith. All that I can 
here add is, “ Look to this, ye professional gentlemen of England. 
It is worthy your consideration. Examine also into the ques- 
tion, whether the growth of splents, so frequent in English horses, 
and so, comparatively, unfrequent in French ones, has any thing to 
do with the tread of a horse, and whether or not the form, the posi- 
tion, and the nailing of the clumsy French shoe, have the effect of 
not producing these often troublesome though seldom serious ex- 
crescences.” Speaking of the horses in Britanny, the late Lord Har- 
ley, in his excellent contribution to the old Sporting Magazine, un- 
der the signature of the Old Forester, has this remarkable sentence : 
“ One thing struck me forcibly, and that was, that although worked 
hard early, and knocked about on bad hilly roads, you never see 
nor hear of such things as splents, curbs, thoroughpins, or spavins.” 
In young horses — colts — I am certain the tread has much to do 
with the production of splents, and when I saw so many on the 
legs of the young racing stock of Lord Henry Seymour, at his 
stud-farm, near Paris, three years back, I accounted for them by 
their galloping across their paddocks, which are on ground of 
somewhat considerable descent. Now, as Lord Harley informs us 
the horses of Brittany are ridden when young, and on bad and 
hilly roads, it is difficult to account for the absence of splents, unless 
* I have something to say on the subject of hay, in my next letter. 
t “ There are corns,” says Mr. Spooner, “ of every shade and degree, 
from the slightest speck of ecehymosis to the most serious evil so it is 
possible the French smiths find some occasionally, but not sufficient to cause 
lameness. 
