462 
VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE. 
he detected the small cataract in the eye. He told Mr. Croft 
that he was sorry to discover an unsound horse for him. Mr. 
Croft said, “ So am I; and, upon my honour, I had not the least 
idea of such a thing;” and I believe him. Mr. Croft also said 
he wondered he had not seen it, as he was continually in the 
habit of having the horse’s eyes sponged. Cataract is certainly 
an unsoundness, and must have existed when the horse was 
sold, as it never forms in the horse except as the consequence of 
repeated active inflammation in the eye. The inflammation that 
produces cataract is much more easily seen than the cataract 
that comes after it. The horse’s sight is defective. He saw the 
horse again in October: the cataract was then much larger, and 
the horse could see but little from that eye. 
Mr. Jervis, leading counsel for the plaintiff, now said that he 
should not insist upon the case as regarded the rupture, but con¬ 
fine himself to the cataract. 
Mr. Collier, of Chester, saw the horse in the beginning of 
October: there was a small cataract in the near eye. Cataract 
never forms without repeated active inflammation. Will not 
swear that a cataract may not form in a month. 
Mr. Richards and Mr. Crowe, both of Shrewsbury, deposed 
that cataract could not form without repeated active inflamma¬ 
tion ; and they consider that inflammation must have existed se¬ 
veral months before the cataract formed. 
For the Defence.—Edward Edwards, a horse-breaker, took 
the horse for Mrs. Roberts to see. He, Mr. Roberts’s coachman, 
and a man of the name of Pratt, all three examined the horse’s 
eyes in the door-place of the stable : there w r as nothing the mat¬ 
ter with them then. The coachman said the horse had very 
good eyes; that he knew his dam, and she had capital eyes. 
Mrs. Roberts asked the coachman if he had examined the eyes, 
and he replied that he had. He knows what is meant by a 
speck on a horse’s eye—that is called a cataract. He rode and 
looked after the horse for Mr. Croft several months in the 
spring, and never saw any thing the matter with his eyes. He 
w r as in the habit of sponging them, but not because any thing 
was the matter with them, but as a part of grooming. Mr. Croft 
had all his horses’ eyes and noses sponged. He saw the horse 
again upon the 26th of July, at the Cross Keys ; he then could 
see the speck plain enough, and has seen it upon examining the 
eye since. 
Joseph Pratt deposed to the examination of the eyes by the 
coachman, Edwards, and himself, as stated by Edwards. 
Mr. Croft’s bailiff’ had known the horse since he was foaled, 
and had occasionally looked after him. Never had seen or heard 
