ON WORM IN THE EYE OF THE HORSE. 197 
Arabia or Persia. At. page 234, vol. iii, of those lectures, Mr. 
W. Percivall quotes a passage from a letter on the subject, writ¬ 
ten by Mr. Charles Percivall, then veterinary surgeon of the 
11th Light Dragoons. Mr. P. thus expresses himself: “ In 
low, humid situations in India, where fogs are prevalent, or 
where there is stagnant water, especially after an unusually wet 
season, worm in the eye is a very common occurrence.” Now, 
Mr. C. P .was stationed much further up the country than I ever 
was, although I will grant with him there are low situations in all 
parts of India, from the g-eneral flatness of the country, and fogs, 
and those so dense, that I have known the sun to rise in the 
month of January as bright and clear as it ever rose, but by 
7 A. m. I have been obliged to alight from my buggy, and, by 
giving my groom one end of the whip, and holding the other in 
my hand, grope along the road as well as we could to find our 
way—I holding the horse by the head, he by the side of the road, 
to prevent our falling into the ditches, which are on either side 
of the road about six feet deep, at the station I was at (Dum 
Dum). I cannot see how the humid atmosphere, the low situa¬ 
tion, the fog, the wet, or the cold can produce worm in the 
eye ; and this because the horses of India are not turned out to 
grass as in England. There are no out-door pastures in India; 
horses are always kept at stable. They are fed with grass, it is 
true; but you employ a man on purpose to cut a given quantity 
daily, which he does with a small hand hoe, at every stroke push¬ 
ing from him—shaving the grass, as it were, off the ground, as 
close as he possibly can ; and this not in an open field, but by 
the side of a road, or where it is much trodden, for the common 
grass the horse will not eat. It is what is called, in the native 
language, the Dh,ooss grass ; it is an extremely fine fibrous grass 
branching out in every direction : the leaf very much resembles 
flax. All horses are very fond of this grass. Now, this grass 
grows where the ground is most trodden ; the same as you see in 
England, that fine sweet clover invariably grows at the edges of 
a pathway through a field, though, perhaps, not a leaf of clover 
is in the whole field beside. Well, when the grass-cutter has pro¬ 
cured as much as will serve for the 24 hours’ consumption, he 
carries his burden home to the stable, where it remains, proba¬ 
bly most of it, until the morrow, before the horse has it given to 
him, because the grass-cutter frequently has several miles to go 
for good grass, and more especially in the rainy season; conse¬ 
quently he does not return till 8 or 4 o’clock p. m. The o-rass 
he then brings home will have to serve the horse until the mor¬ 
row at the same hour (Blackey always making up his mind to 
bring no more home than the horse will consume in one day) • 
VOL. VII. Dd 
