622 
VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE. 
plaintiff and his groom, two grooms from Osberton, Mr. Angus, of 
Plumtree Farm, and the blacksmith who shod her, all of whom spoke to 
the mare going “feelingly/’ “groggily,” and stepping short, all indi¬ 
cations of unsoundness. Mr: Taylor, of Nottingham, was also examined, 
and he corroborated the plaintiff in his opinion that the mare was 
suffering and had been suffering for some time from chronic inflam¬ 
mation of the navicular joint, and that she was unsound at the time 
of sale. 
Professor Spooner said, that he was Principal of the Veterinary 
College in London, and had been connected with that institution for 
upwards of thirty-three years. He had examined the mare in dispute 
this morning, and in his opinion she was unsound. He found that she 
went short in her fore action ; he could not say that this was decided 
lameness, but it was an imperfect action, indicating to him that the 
mare had been habitually defective for some considerable time. With 
regard to her fore feet, he noticed that both were diseased—the horn of 
the hoof being very hard and brittle. It had also chipped near the 
punctures through which the shoe-nails passed, instead of being tough 
and yielding, as it would be in its sound and healthy state. This was 
particularly the case with the off foot—one foot was a little larger than 
the other. This, in his opinion, was a morbid state of the hoof, and 
calculated to interfere with the usefulness of the animal. The resting 
of the foot, and other symptoms which had been described by the 
plaintiff and other witnesses, were evidences of the mare’s unsoundness. 
From what he had seen that morning, and from what he had heard in 
court, it was his opinion that the diseased state of the feet was of long 
standing; was, in fact, constitutional and hereditary. It had certainly 
existed at the time of sale. He had also examined the shoes which had 
been taken off the mare’s hoofs, and now produced. He considered 
them very badly constructed, and calculated to excite the symptoms he 
had described. There were eight nails in each shoe, which he con¬ 
sidered more than necessary, and he might state that half the evils 
of shoeing arose from too many nails being used in their appli¬ 
ance. In his opinion it was not chronic inflammation of the navicular 
joint that the mare was suffering from, but a diseased state of the 
hoof, which was hard and brittle, instead of being tough and pliable. 
This being the case for the plaintiff. 
Mr. Smith addressed the jury on the part of the defendant, his ground 
of defence being that the mare was perfectly sound at the time his 
client sold him to the plaintiff, but that when she returned from 
Osberton she had a corn upon each foot, which rendered her slightly 
lame, but that at the present moment she was again perfectly sound. He 
called the defendant and several witnesses to prove the condition of this 
mare’s antecedents to the time of her being sold to the plaintiff. It 
seems she was originally bought by a person named Lamb for £11, and 
sold by him to the defendant at JBawtry Spring fair in 1860, for £15. 
That she was then as sound as the best horse in England, and was free 
from all lameness or unsoundness whatever. As to her state after the 
sale, Mr. Smith called several veterinary surgeons who had examined 
her, and as contrasted with Professor Spooner’s evidence for the plaintiff, 
we may give that of— 
Mr. B. Cartledge, who said he was a veterinary surgeon, practising 
at Sheffield, one of the board of examiners for the Edinburgh College, 
and veterinary surgeon to the 1st West Yorkshire Yeomanry Cavalry. 
He had examined the mare on the 15th of May, and found her perfectly 
free from lameness. She had acorn in each of her fore feet, and in his 
