ON THE FORMATION OF CATARACT. 
43 
inflammation has attacked the eye several times. I will not 
assert that it might not occur in a month after an inflammatory 
attack, so as to be perceptible, but I should rather give it a wider 
latitude. Considering the number of horses I have been possess¬ 
ed of, cataract has dfealt leniently with me: only three cases, 
but each of them full three months in the completion of them; 
and in each I was agreeably amused with the off-and-on 
system—one week blind, and the next not blind. The cases 
were, first, a mare I bred in Hampshire. Itwas a three months 
job ; and I rode her hack two years stone blind. Secondly, the 
big grey horse I had at Shrewsbury. He carried me a hunting 
more than two months, after the opacity that forms the cataract 
commenced, till at last he could see a hedge, but not a ditch, 
with Lord Cleveland’s hounds. He did not, however, go quite 
blind with either eye, until he had been some time a leader in 
the Nimrod coach. I date his blindness to a violent inflamma¬ 
tory attack two years before, when he was not my property. 
The third case is stated at length in one of my letters in the 
Sporting Magazine. It was a horse of my own that was seized 
with violent inflammation after a severe run with Sir Bellingham 
Graham’s hounds in Leicestershire. He was stone blind the 
following day ; but after many months experience of the on-and- 
off symptoms, cataract formed in one eye, and the other stood 
sound. 
“ You ask my permission to insert this letter in the Shrewsbury 
Chronicle. My name has been. too long before the public to 
make me nice on such matters, and I am always happy to pro¬ 
mote any inquiry into the state and condition of those noble 
animals, which have afforded me so much pleasure through 
life. 
u I am, sir, your obedient servant, 
“ Charles James Apperley, 
* “ Author of Nimrod’s Letters. 
“ To Mr. Hickman, Vet. Surgeon, 
Shrewsbury.*' 
But now to the point:—Mr. Croft’s horse afterwards came into 
the possession of Mr. Watson, a surgeon, in Elersmere, in this 
county, who disposed of him this summer, and had then no ca¬ 
taract whatever (as I have been informed), his eyes being per¬ 
fectly sound in every respect. Now it appears to me that this 
was a case of capsular cataract, yet when or how it was formed 
I cannot say ; but, from the testimony of Mr. Croft, who is a very 
respectable gentleman, and in the medical profession, and who, 
I believe, bred the horse, and also from that of his bailiff and 
