VETERINARY MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE. 16o 
of purchase? Its effect on the animal cannot leave the least 
doubt as to its serious character. Would it not be just that 
such cases the buyer should have a claim on the vendoi fo f 
return of the purchase money? but, as 1 have said befoie, t 
usages are silent on this point. 
Permit me, gentlemen, to quote, in support of my argument 
the opinion of a celebrated orator of the legislative body, and 
whose authority has been often invoked in favour of the conser¬ 
vation of these usages. Listen to what M. Fame sa.d^inriie 
sitting of the tribunal on the 12th Ventose, yeai X • 
seller cannot refuse to restore the money under the pretext that 
the thing has no longer existence, but has perished since it came 
into the possession of the purchaser. It is sufficient for the 
purchaser to prove that it perished in consequence of its bad 
quality. In fact, as soon as this proof is obtained, it is evident 
that the purchaser ought not to be placed in a less favourable 
situation than if he had returned the thing befoie it had 
^ToaU these imperfections, and errors, and contradictions which 
I have mentioned in this legislation according to usage, 1 cou d 
add many others without exhausting the objections to which i 
is exposed. I might ask, for example, if, since the epoch of the 
division of France into departments, the remembrance ot th ® old 
territorial boundaries is not so much effaced that it would be 
very difficult even for a well-informed man to say of what pro¬ 
vince the country which he inhabits once formed a part-under 
the Government of what parliament it existed—and, consequently, 
by what custom it ought to be governed in the purchase and sale 
of domestic animals? 
In support of this, I will remind you of the certificate pre¬ 
sented to the Tribunal of Commerce, m Paris, in the sitting ot 
the 20th of January, 1832, signed by all the Advocates of 
Mortagne, attesting that that town was governed by the usages 
and customs of Perche, where the duration of the warranty is 
nine days; while it was maintained by M. Huzard, and with 
whose opinion the tribunal coincided, that Mortagne was or- 
merly under the jurisdiction of the parliament of Rouen, w ere 
the duration of the warranty was forty days. 
I could, moreover, speak of the singular position m which 
those judges were placed, who, on the same day, and before the 
same assembly, pronounced in one cause, that a horse oug i o 
be returned for roaring; and in a second, the circumstances ot 
which were precisely similar, that roaring was not unsoundness ; 
and that, because these horses, the subjects of dispute, were 
bought in two cantons close to each other, and divided on v 
