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ON THE CAUSE OF 
cases of chronic lameness to be found among our most valuable 
kinds of horses. The causes of this mischief, I consider, are 
especially two :—first, our ignorance and cruelty —expecting that 
the noble powers of the horse are in unison with our own in¬ 
ordinate desires, we expect too much from him, much more 
than our continental brethren ; hence the soundness and lasting 
durability of their horses’ limbs when compared with our own. 
Much to be pitied is that unfortunate steed whose locomotive 
nervous energy is great, should he chance fall into the posses¬ 
sion of an individual, who, when rattling by the gaping spec¬ 
tators either on the back of or behind him in harness, distressed, 
but still at the top of his speed, evidently fancies, by his know¬ 
ing look and his desire to court observance, that the whole 
credit is due to himself: with this silly, vain, and cruel conceit, 
the poor animal, as long as his merciless master thinks proper to 
court admiration, is permitted and even urged to abuse his 
extraordinary powers. The necessary consequence of such con* 
tinned rapid exertion is, alas ! too evident. What greater proof 
can there be of the mischievous consequences resulting from 
our undue use of the horse, and also in taking him at much too 
early a period into service, necessarily disarranging the beauti¬ 
fully complicated structure of his limbs, not yet sufficiently 
matured by age for labour, than the woful fact, that, if an in¬ 
dividual is in want of a horse, and looking into his mouth, he 
finds only aged, viz. eight years old, he immediately rejects him, 
from the knowledge (much to our shame) that the probability is 
his limbs are so shook, as to render him unfit for the necessary 
duties of even a humane master, when in fact, if the horse was 
treated as he should be, he would barely have arrived at the 
prime of his life. 
Again;—horse proprietors must not suppose, as I mentioned 
in a former paper, that, because they have a horse whose desire 
for labour is great, his bodily strength is adequate to the 
exertion : his desire for labour depends on the excitability of 
that part of the brain and nervous system which influences the 
muscles of locomotion. And horsemen should ask themselves, is 
the form of the animal in unison with his willingness for labour ? 
If it is not, which in thousands of instances is the case, he should, 
if he is desirous to preserve his horse, never use him without 
having that universal pest “groggy lameness” in his mind. 
The second great cause is an insufficiency of rest after the 
lameness is removed. Professor Coleman very properly observes, 
that the principal cause of foot lameness is concussion; it is 
also the primary and most frequent cause of most lamenesses, 
whether of the shoulder, knee, splents, extensor or flexor ten- 
