EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
594 
erect within them, or rather supported by them, to such a degree 
only, that, his feet still remaining upon the ground, he has it in 
his power to stand, the same as he before did without the slings, 
or, by relaxing his limbs, to repose the weight of his body upon 
the slings: in which way, by alternating his position and 
varying his posture, he is able to continue and has continued, 
providing the girths and straps and pads of the slings do not 
chafe him, for years even, within his suspensory cage. 
To Mr. Arnold’s admirable summing up and judicial deci¬ 
sion, we have nothing to object, save that it seems to us, that 
to Mr. Daws’s evidence,—wdien it came to be known how he 
had watched the transaction from beginning to end, he being 
the only veterinary evidence who had actually, in propria 
persona , eye-witnessed the entry and slinging and ascent of the 
animals—we submit, we repeat, under such peculiar circum¬ 
stances, Mr. Daws’s evidence was entitled to greater weight 
than was given to it. Professional evidence summoned at 
the moment for the express purpose of bolstering up the 
defence, was manifestly light and little worth in com¬ 
parison to this. With this exception, we do not see to what 
decision the worthy magistrate could have come otherwise 
than the one to which he, in his judicial wisdom, found 
himself driven by the letter of the law. For our own 
part, from a long residence among and familiarity with 
horses, from an acquaintance with their habits in health, 
and an observance of their sufferings under pain or disease, 
we feel no hesitation whatever in denouncing M. Poitevin’s 
exhibition to be one involving “pain and torture” on the 
animals made to subserve to it. Upon what grounds the 
“ commission” of the French Government, as was asserted, 
came to different conclusions, we are of course unable to say; 
it is not however unlikely, that some future day may bring 
forth something, to enlighten us on this part of the subject, 
from the continent. Meanwhile, we must iterate our opinion 
and conviction—a conviction founded on actual experience 
and repeated observation—that the exhibition was a most 
unwarrantable infringement of humanity to the brute creation, 
invented for the purpose of pandering to the appetite for the 
