V 
47o 
LAWRENCE ON THE HORSE. 
“ There are certain external and visible detects in the horse 
and mare, which may be, and often are, propagated. The chief 
of these are splents, spavins, round and gourdy legs subject to 
grease and running thrushes; crooked hams, thick, ill-shaped 
and ill-set heads, imperfect eyes. Good or evil qualities like¬ 
wise are propagated ; and it is not advisable to breed from a 
restiff horse or mare. Saltram, by Eclipse, a horse which ran at 
Newmarket when blind, communicated that defect to his pro¬ 
geny; among others, to Sjr Charles Bunbury’s Whisker, which, 
being blind himself, got scarcely any foals that retained their 
sight.” 
We go with him heart and hand in his reprobation of the un¬ 
necessary and horrible cruelty often used in breaking in. There 
is required only “ a regular, steady, and experienced man, whose 
first and most important qualification is unwearied patience ; the 
next, undaunted courage, joined to that indescribable quality 
which some men naturally possess, of being attractive to animals, 
and at once loved and feared by them.” 
We maintain, with him, that the education of the horse should 
be that of the child. Pleasure should be, as much as possible, 
associated with the early lessons; but firmness, or, if need be, 
coercion, must confirm the habit of obedience. The restive and 
vicious horse is, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, made so 
by ill usage, and not by nature; although we know that there are 
“ a few, which the devil himself, in the guise of a horse-breaker, 
would be utterly unable to tame.” 
There is one passage in the treatment of the colt which de¬ 
serves the attention of the veterinary surgeon. “ Docking the 
sucking foal at a month old, an operation which may then be 
performed with a sharp knife, is attended with trifling pain, and 
no risk ; whereas, both the pain and the danger of the operation 
on adults are considerable.” 
In the chapters which follow, on the defects of the feet and legs, 
there is much that is good, mingled with trifling errors. We were 
particularly pleased with his observations on those who have, to a 
great degree, needlessly frightened themselves and the public with 
the evils necessarily consequent on the common system of shoe¬ 
ing. After noticing the undoubted fact, that horses with almost 
every description of feet, will occasionally go sound, and that the 
for ejeet will, nine times out of ten, in hard-worked horses, outlast 
the fore legs y he says u A naturally sound and tough hoof, rationally 
shod, is a good fundamental estate for life to a labouring horse; 
and he goes comfortably and well upon it, presenting a hoof more 
neat and handsome than in its natural state ; devoid, indeed, of 
the possibility of external expansion, but enjoying the benefit of 
