488 VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE IN SCOTLAND. 
quantity of matter,” nearly a quarter of a hundredweight 
of pus, every globule of which was produced by a process of 
secretion requiring a definite time for its accomplishment. 
Second, the extent and thickness of the walls of the cyst,” 
a bag capable of containing the quantity of matter stated 
above, and half an inch in thickness. Third, “ its being 
situated exterior to the pericardium,” the matter was not 
contained in any of the natural cavities or structures of the 
body, but in an adventitious or diseased formation of inde¬ 
pendent growth; and, as previously stated in the evidence 
“ of low organisation,” that is, containing few blood-vessels. 
And, Fourth, “ the necessarily slow growth of such collec¬ 
tions,” <c necessarily slow,” because every such abnormal 
collection must either have been in existence at the birth of 
the animal, or begun some time after ; and, however large a 
growth, must have begun at a mere point or speck, its wall 
a pellicle in thinness, and gone on increasing in size by a 
simple extension of the capacity of the bag, produced by the 
pressure of the contained matter; and that pressure again 
gradually increasing by the secretion of fresh pus from the 
internal wall of the cyst, but both processes limited in activity 
and rendered slow by the comparative deficiency of blood¬ 
vessels in the structure, affording only a limited quantity of 
blood for carrying on the double processes of secreting the 
contained matter, and increasing the size of its envelope. 
Such were the grounds upon which it appears the veterinary 
opinions were founded as to the age of the collection in ques¬ 
tion. They seem to us to agree with the ideas of the best 
physiologist of the day, but here we may be wrong; and the 
Sheriff was at full liberty to doubt, both if they were in ac¬ 
cordance with science, and although they were, if that 
science was correct; but common candour and justice will 
hardly allow that he was entitled to set them down as no 
ground of opinion or knowledge at all. 
The Sheriff says that the cause of the pursuer derived ad¬ 
ditional strength from the defender’s not cross-examining 
his witnesses, for which he remarks, “ there was ample 
room.” But surely the Sheriff knows that testimony may 
be strengthened as well as weakened by an opposing cross- 
examination, which is like the fiery trial, from which the pure 
metal of truth and knowledge comes out unblemished, while 
the dross of falsehood and ignorance is consumed and disap¬ 
pears. Seeing that there was two alternatives, and that the 
evidence might have been improved instead of damaged by 
cross-examination, it was hardly fair of the Sheriff to adopt 
the latter view without stating why. He might at least have 
