ON HOCK LAMENESS. 
33 
worn” is not perfectly borne out by them, as, indeed, an inspec¬ 
tion of the parts would convince the most sceptical inquirer? 
If Mr. Dick is altogether wrong in his persuasions with regard to 
this case, is it not likely that he is equally erroneous in his 
ideas of the other cases that I have described ? The fact is, he 
has seen indentations in the hocks of horses that might not have 
been lame, at or about the spot I have pointed out, and from 
this he has drawn two inferences—the one being, that such ap¬ 
pearance was a normal structure (in which he may possibly be 
right) ; and the other being, that such appearances were exactly 
similar to those in the cases I had described, in which inference 
he is most certainly wrong, 
Mr. Dick says, that it is a libel on the Author of Nature to 
suppose that one part of the hock is more liable to injury than 
another ; but if this be a libel, there must be a pretty good num¬ 
ber of them in the frame both of man and animals, for we all 
know how much more liable some parts are to disease than 
others—the navicular joint, the seat of corn, the flexor tendons, 
and a dozen beside. 
It will be unnecessary for me to make any observations on 
Mr. Dick’s allusion to the ignorance of lecturers and writers at 
this end of the island, as such comparisons have rather an invi¬ 
dious tendency, and can be of no service. Mr. Dick doubts the 
acuteness of my understanding in not at once comprehending the 
symptoms of friction, when he said they were quite the reverse of 
those I had mentioned. Now, to have been quite the reverse, they 
must have been unlike not in one or two, but in every particular 
(which I cannot even now consider them to be), otherwise the 
expression should have been in some or many respects dissimilar, 
which would have been understood : this, however, is not a ma¬ 
terial point, although it leaves us in some doubt as to whether 
Mr. Dick considers friction confined to cases of bog spavin. 
I have no space to make any further remarks on the subject 
of friction, as to whether its effects are mechanical or not; but I 
must only remind Mr. Dick, that when he says, he,” meaning 
myself, “ has never seen any thing of the kind in the hock, 
otherwise he would have stated it,” he is here again falling 
into the same error that he has committed on several occasions 
in his papers, viz., that of searching for his facts in his own 
imagination, or contenting himself instead with a single hypo¬ 
thesis. 
I can but barely allude to Mr. Pritchard’s fair and candid paper 
on the subject of hock lameness in the last October number; 
and while I must differ from him with regard to the frequency 
of the cases, I must thank him for his argument, opinion, and 
VOL. XI. !• 
