688 
VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE. 
of the defendant, dissecting with much ingenuity the evidence of the 
medical gentlemen; and proceeded to call a number of witnesses 
in whose hands the horse had been for the last nine years, and who 
described it throughout the whole of that period not only as a sound 
horse, but a horse that had never been known to have a day’s 
illness, nor to have exhibited the slightest symptom of chronic 
disease of any sort. 
The first person called was the defendant, who had the horse in 
his service at Crookwood Mill for two years, and who stated that 
a better horse he never had, and that his only reason for parting 
with it was, that he was about to leave his present occupation. 
The next, was Mr. Robert Wild (a respectable farmer at Coate), 
the party from whom the defendant bought the horse, who gave 
the most positive testimony that during six years (the time he 
had the horse in his possession) he had not a better or a sounder 
horse among the two-or-three-and-twenty that he was then in the 
habit of keeping : in short, said Mr. Wild, “if all my horses had 
been like this one, I could have done with two or three or less 
and the sole cause of his parting with it was because he could not 
keep it in the grass field, it was such a horse to jump. Next came 
the carter who had driven the horse, and had the entire care of it, 
for Mr. Wild, during five years previous to its being sold to the 
defendant, who said the horse had never been sick a day, or shewn 
any thing like a cough, during the whole of that time. After him, 
Mr. Robert Hale, a farmer at Erchfont, was examined, and he had 
known the horse during the two years the defendant had it. He 
had seen it working in a cart against a hill so steep that it was 
impossible to get on more than a dozen yards at a time, and he 
considered the animal to be “ a downright good sound one.” He 
did not believe there was a better one in the whole parish. And 
Mr. Henry Bishop and Mr. John Snook (both farmers of Erchfont) 
gave evidence to a like effect; which was borne out by the black¬ 
smith who had shod the horse for a year and three-quarters pre¬ 
vious to its getting into the plaintiffs hands. 
After this Mr. Robt. Elford was called; and Mr. Elford said 
that he had been a member of the Veterinary College twenty- 
three years, and, in his opinion, all the disease that had been 
described by Mr. Vincent and Mr. Broad might have been con¬ 
tracted in two months. Mr. Elford, however, did not go very 
minutely into the reasons which induced him to arrive at this 
conclusion 
Mr. John Coleman, of Tilshead (also a member of the Veterinary 
College), was then examined. Having (he said) heard the evidence 
on the part of the plaintiff, in his opinion the death of the horse 
was to be attributed to pleura-pneumonia and inflammation of the 
