MR. DAWs’s ACCOUNT OF THE POITEVIN AFFAIR. 587 
they ought not to be countenanced. But, however repre¬ 
hensible I may consider such proceedings, I am bound to 
deal with this question upon other considerations. I am 
bound to deal with it according to law , and the evidence adduced 
before me , and not to travel out of the facts that have been 
proved;—to interpret the law strictly and impartially, as I 
am best able to understand it; and to decide whether, in my 
opinion, the defendants have committed the offence with 
which they are charged. I have come , not , I will own , without 
reluctance , to the conclusion that they have not : the sum¬ 
mons must therefore be dismissed. 
Mr. Daws’s Account of the Poitevin Affair. 
Dear Sir, —The mind sleeps, and is refreshed; and 
although I tax myself with being “ apathetic” towards 4 The 
Veterinarian’ of late with my pen, still my eyes and my 
ears have not been insensible to the attainment of knowledge 
to be acquired from men and manners, experience, experi¬ 
ment, and observation. 
My name having appeared in a conspicuous manner of 
late, in the London and Provincial papers, as advocate of the 
“ Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,” and the case to which 
I was called being a novel one,—one that will never again 
occur, in this country at least, so long as the “Royal Society 
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals” is in existence,— 
I am induced, under such a stimulus, to give you the benefit 
of my professional observations. 
The animals unnecessarily subjected to abuse and torture, 
were aged ponies, mares, between thirteen and fourteen hands 
high, and in good working condition. They were saddled 
and bridled in the usual manner, one with a side-saddle for 
the female aeronaut. A sling, of a somewhat complicated 
character, was afterwards strapped around the animal’s body, 
before and behind the saddle, terminating with two loose straps 
with pulleys on either side, to which the ropes were attached, 
to fasten them to the car of the balloon. The canvass portion 
of the sling did not extend higher up than the lateral con¬ 
vexity of the thorax and abdomen. There were, besides, 
straps passing between the fore-legs and around the neck, 
with a breeching similar to such as is in general use among 
cart-horses, or as a means of transit from the shore to the 
hold of a ship, or vice-versa. I must give the inventor every 
credit for his ingenuity, as I think it utterly impossible for a 
horse to slip out of them : an accident that has occasionally 
