VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE. 
627 
enormous amount of £2000. Ought not the jury and others to relin¬ 
quish their various pursuits, and take to farming? At a time when all 
the agricultural interests were crying out, “Ruination,” here was a 
gentleman, who paid a total rental of £210 a year, claiming £5900 
odd for compensation for the injury done to these farms; and he 
furthermore actually added £2000 additional in round numbers. 
Now he believed that Mr. Houghton had mistaken his vocation. 
Instead of going to live in his rural cottage upon the hanks of the 
Bristol Channel, he should have gone to town, or try to he leturned to 
parliament for Birmingham instead of Mr. Bright, and then perhaps 
lie might be appointed to an office which he appeared to be eminently 
qualified to fill—namely, that of Chancellor of the Exchequer. He 
would then have ample opportunities afforded him for evincing his 
eminent talents in cooking accounts. He had studied effect, by bring¬ 
ing forward the eminent chemist, Mr. Herapath, to excite their admira¬ 
tion and astonishment by the production of his wonderful blue bottle, 
the liquid in it being coloured a blue tint by the introduction of a 
minute particle of copper. This blue bottle, when produced in court, 
caused a louder buz than many blue bottles of another description. He 
was reminded of the admiration which learned lecturers at the Poly¬ 
technic and Royal Institution elicited from elderly ladies, who handed 
to their charming daughters coloured liquids magically transformed in 
bottles, at the same time exclaiming in rapture, “My dear, who could 
have thought it. Well, I do declare !” (laughter). The plaintiff he pre¬ 
sumed hoped that they would believe his tale of damage sustained. 
They might have read nursery tales, but would they believe them ? 
The learned counsel, after indulging in a strain of good humour, pro¬ 
ceeded to cite certain eases in which it was held that when a lawful and 
useful calling was carried on in a convenient situation, even when a 
nuisance, its proprietors were not responsible for any trifling damage 
which might be inflicted, as compared with the large commercial 
benefits which it might be the means of conferring upon the neighbour¬ 
hood. He argued that this was a reasonable and wise decision. Was 
it to be supposed that the existence of large industrial undertakings 
were to be virtually prohibited by the infliction of such enormous 
penalties when, as he should show, the situation was conveniently 
situated? Mr. Bankart was stated to have been a London attorney, who 
came down to Wales to speculate in copper works, as he was in a hurry to 
get rich. But let them see whether the Birmingham man or the London 
man appeared to be the most successful. Mr. Houghton was a Bir¬ 
mingham surveyor, and a speculator in a mineral scheme. He was 
engaged in surveying the place, and was well acquainted with the effects 
of copper smoke, tie had to take flights over the country like a crow. 
He had taken the farms with his eyes wide open, and was he to come 
before them and pretend that he was like an ignorant strange farmer, 
who knew nothing about minerals ? Did it not rather appear as if he 
had bought both the land and the lawsuits at the same time? With 
regard to the horses which had died on the farm, why did not the plain¬ 
tiff keep some sort of books, and not trust merely to his memory ? He 
did not supply them with a list of the horses that had been drowned, 
that had been poisoned, and those which had died from other causes. 
He was not a humble, ignorant person, but an intelligent man of 
business, who understood figures, and who had been himself engaged in 
valuation cases. He had himself overcrowded horses in the winter 
upon exposed downs that was not adapted for them. The same remark 
applied to the sheep. Why did not the plaintiff devise means to count 
