72 
OBSEllVATlONS ON SOUNDNESS. 
sertations on the subject, but these present a great variety of 
opinion touching the causes, seat, nature, and consequences 
of crib-biting. Whilst one contends that, in the act, the 
horse swallows atmospheric air, another pretends that the 
animal ejects air, which act is accompanied with a particular 
noise, created by gas generated in the stomach. Some say 
the habit is injurious to horses who practise it, and that it fre¬ 
quently renders them valueless; while others maintain that it 
nowise materially hurts them. The court (of appeal) has 
pronounced in favour of its innocuousness.’^ 
The writer goes on to say what others have said before, viz., 
that crib-biting is not a disease of itself; he is of opinion that 
it should be regarded as a vicious habit rather than a disease. 
Oliphant, in speaking of this habit, says, Crib-biting 
being an unnatural sucking in of the air, must be, to a certain 
degree, injurious to digestion, must dispose to colic, and so 
interfere with the strength and usefulness and health of the 
horse. Some crib-biters are good goers, but they probably 
would have possessed more endurance had they not acquired 
this habit; and it is a fact well established that as soon 
as a horse begins to be a crib-biter he, in more than nine 
cases out of ten, begins to’lose condition. He is not to the 
experienced eye the horse he was before. The wear of the 
front teeth, and even the frequent breaking of them, makes a 
horse old before his time, and sometimes renders it difficult, 
or almost impossible, for him to graze. 
Crib-biting which has not yet produced disease or altera¬ 
tion of structure is nol an tinsonndnes-s, but is a vice under a 
warranty that a horse is ‘ sound and free from vice.^ 
“ Thus, where an action was brought on the warranty of a 
Horse which had been sold for ninety guineas, the question 
was, whether crib-biting, which was the vice in question, was 
such a species of nnsoundness as to sustain the action. The 
horse had been warranted sound generallv. Some eminent 
veterinary surgeons were called as witnesses, who stated ihat 
the habit of crib-biting originated in indigestion; that a 
horse, by this habit, wasted the saliva which was necessary 
to digest his food, and that the consequence w’as a gradual 
emaciation. They said that they did not consider crib-biting 
to be an unsonndness^ but that it might lead to unsoundness \ 
that it w'as sometimes an indication of incipient disease, and 
sometimes produced unsoundness where it existed in any 
degree. Upon this Mr. Justice Burroughs said, ‘This horse 
was only proved to be an incipient crib-biter. I am clear 
that it is not included in a general warranty;^ and the 
plaintiff was accordingly nonsuited. 
