472 
OBSERVATIONS ON 
on jurisprudence who have adopted these strange and inexpres¬ 
sive terms. From these sources M. Legat has derived his defini¬ 
tions ; but who is to inform us that la follie is a species of epi¬ 
lepsy ? that corbe , courbe , courbature, mean the same thing, an 
indefinite ill-understood malady, a complication of maladies, a 
kind of lassitude, a general debility, or any state in which the 
respiration is not free and perfect; that le morve de corbe is sup¬ 
puration in the lungs, &c. &c. 
It is easy to perceive under what embarrassment the veterinarian 
will labour who has to pronounce an opinion on such authorities, 
and on descriptions so inexact and contradictory: what tribunal 
shall pronounce judgment, when the veterinary surgeon does not 
understand the case? 
If one party denies the usage, how shall its existence be proved? 
by written custom, or the attestation of authors, or the jurispru¬ 
dence of the country ? But the written custom does not always 
record the usage, and the jurisprudence may be contested : some 
authors follow the written law, some the custom of Paris or of 
some nearer town, and some would refer to the general spirit of 
the common law. 
The attestation of authors would afford no stable foundation for 
a just decision, for it is often the result of careless examination. 
The law of the place would seem the best authority; but it is 
not always consistent, and decisions contrary to each other are 
made every day: and then, to follow implicitly the law of the 
district when circumstances have changed, and the art has im¬ 
proved, is it not to limit or arrest the progress of science? It 
must adapt itself to the change of circumstances ; and since the 
publication of the code, several things are recognised as unsound¬ 
ness which were not so before. The tribunals, however, ought 
not to originate these changes, but to follow and confirm them. 
The progress of veterinary medicine, and a more profound know¬ 
ledge of the diseases of animals existing among the numerous 
veterinarians that have issued from our schools, must bear upon 
and change the opinions and decisions relating to soundness. 
What interests are sacrificed by this gradual change?—not those 
of the buyer, for the new law offers him a more extensive and 
better founded guarantee: those of the seller may be, in some 
degree, because he will no longer be able, on the faith of usages, 
to obtain a large price for an animal of little value; and where 
would be the harm of that? When these changes have arrived, 
how will they be established ? It will not be for the buyers and 
the sellers to go to the tribunals, and say that they have dis¬ 
covered new causes of unsoundness, of which the usages of the 
place did not speak; but the veterinary surgeon must be the 
