94 
VICIOUS HORSES. 
racter. It is decidedly superior to any work of its class that has 
come under our notice ; and still—as most works of the kind in¬ 
deed are—is as intelligible and interesting to the general as to the 
professional reader. Besides which, it contains useful information 
on subjects not generally to be found in such works; for the 
names of which we may refer to its title. Altogether M. Richard 
has got up a serviceable and saleable work ; and though he has 
manifested that ignorance of English veterinary literature which 
French veterinarians in their writings in general do, he appears to 
have armed himself with such knowledge as the professional 
sources of his own country held out to him. 
Home Extracts. 
VICIOUS HORSES. 
By Harry Hieover. 
There is, I conceive, no animal indigenous or exported to any 
civilized country, where he is in use, in whom vice is so objection¬ 
able as in the horse. I particularize a civilized country, because 
if a Tartar or some other nations found a young horse incorrigibly 
vicious, they could turn him to the same account we do the ox, by 
eating him; but we do not eat horse here, that is, not if we are 
aware that it is so, though we do often, I believe, get such a treat 
in this our great metropoli when we indulge in sausage guaranteed 
made in Germany, or, if we are disposed for a higher relish, war¬ 
ranted filled and cured at Bologna. In truth, we often dine on 
much worse things than would be a bit of a fine young healthy 
horse, put into the hands of a good French cook; he would (to my 
individual taste) make a far better thing of it than the finest sirloin 
of the finest ox ever fatted, roasted plain by a twenty-stone English 
female “ good plain cook,” the only description of female for whom 
I entertain a comparatively sovereign contempt. 
That vicious propensities are sometimes inherent is doubtless a 
fact, as they are with many men ; if not so with the latter, they make 
pretty good use of their time at a very early age, for we see them, 
in phrenologic language, very strongly developed in numberless 
boys. I fear acquaintance with the world does not so much eradi¬ 
cate the vice as teach hypocrisy to conceal it; but, supposing that 
we establish it as a fact that certain vices are inherent in the horse, 
it in no shape proves that he is naturally a vicious or ill-disposed 
animal; various circumstances proye that he is not so. 
