HORSE CAUSE. 
470 
not, in my opinion, constitute unsoundness.—In answer to a 
question from the Lord Chief Justice, he said, that when the car¬ 
tilages were ossified, a horse could trot with the same facility as 
before. On the question being repeated, he said with the same 
apparent facility—I can only judge,said he, of the action 
of the animal from what I see.^^ Such a horse could go through 
the same labour as before, and in the same time, and with the 
same degree of safety. This did not necessarily constitute the 
beginning of disease ; it might have been the termination of the 
disease, for aught he knew, and might not go any further; if it 
did not, unless it produced lameness, it was no unsoundness. 
Thomas Perry. —I am the assistant to the last witness: I 
know this horse; I had known it for three years; I had seen it 
every week, and almost every day. It is not my duty to inspect 
horses with regard to soundness, but, if there is any lameness, it 
is brought to me, and I make my report to my master. I have 
held my situation ten years : the horse has always been used by 
the defendant; it always went through its work well: he is a 
heavy man; he is about sixteen stone. To my knowledge the 
horse was not unsound, but it certainly was not lame. 
Mr. Coleman. —I am the professor at the Veterinary College: 
I have examined the horse now, and I believe I saw it in the 
month of May last; there was then an enlargement and deposi¬ 
tion of bony matter on the cartilages ^ it had also broken knees, 
but that is not an unsoundness. I saw it trot on soft and on hard 
ground, and it was not in the least lame. Unsoundness is a very 
ambiguous term, on which few persons are agreed ,• my definition 
of it is this— whenever there is alteration of structure and func¬ 
tion in a party and that altered function interferes with the duty 
of the whoUy I consider the animal as unsound. In this case, 
although it was not actually lame, yet the seeds of the disease 
existing at that moment, if it should go on and end in lameness, 
1 should say it was unsound when I saw it; it was then in ex¬ 
istence, and the disease had produced effects. It is the same with 
a splint; in the majority of such cases, I should say it would 
not end in lameness: my opinion then was, that he was at that 
time sound, but if, by labour, it should increase, that would be 
unsoundness. 
Charles Fielder. —I keep the yard at the Rose and Crown, 
Knightsbridge: the horse has been in my stable since the 16th of 
last May; I have regularly exercised it up to this time, and I have 
never found it go lame. I rode it here to-day, and I did not per¬ 
ceive that it had any lameness. 
Mr. Sergeant Wildey in reply, told the jury that there were 
many cases in which the best thing they could do was to exercise 
