270 
ON THE EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DISEASE. 
structures : the blood is a living fluid; and of this we are sure, 
that it does not burn in respiration.’’ His idea is, that oxygen, 
besides its ponderable elements, contains some very subtle matter, 
w’hich is capable of assuming the form of heat and light. And 
that, in the course of the circulation, the ethereal part produces 
animal heat, and other effects; and the ponderable part contri¬ 
butes to form carbonic acid, and other products. 
The reader will perceive, from the opinions of Dr. Edwards, 
Davy, and others, that the formation of carbonic acid gas does 
not take place wholly in the lung, but by the immediate union of 
the oxygen of the atmosphere with the carbon contained in the 
venous blood all over the body. K. 
•/ 
giurt0prulifnret 
The Horsema}i’s Manual: being a Treatise on Soundness, the 
Law of Warranty, and generally on the Laws relating to 
Horses. By R. S. Surtees, Ge?it. —Butterworth, London, 
1831 . 
No part of a veterinary surgeon’s duty costs him more pains 
and anxiety, and yet, after all, is apt to turn out less satisfactory 
to him, than that of giving his projessional opinion in regard 
to soundness and unsoundness; and so far, in many cases, coun¬ 
selling or abetting his employer to enter a court of judicature, 
and encounter the glorious uncertainty of the lawin this 
case rendered yet more gloriously uncertain by at least two, if 
not three, causes peculiar to and inseparable from the nature of 
such cases. The first difficulty with which we have to contend 
is interwoven with the intricate and indeterminable nature of the 
subject of soundness itself; the second has, in a measure, sprung 
from the first, and will be found in the mazes and quibbles with 
which the subject is, in a legal point of view, surrounded : a 
third species of embarrassment presents itself in the contradic¬ 
tory and unprincipled evidence so often arrayed one against the 
other on the trial. Taplin, LawTence, Percivall, and the lamented 
Castley, have all written on soundness, and have, respectively, 
divested the subject of some of its obscurity. Percivall’s paper 
underwent a very ample and highly interesting discussion at the 
time it w'as read before the Veterinary Society; on which occa¬ 
sion Messrs. Field, Goodwin, Henderson, Langworthy, Law- 
