CORRESPONDENCE. 
353 
convenient transport to business, or a vehicle of pleasure by 
supplying a much-needed exercise in fresh air which they could 
never have received in any other way. We also find this 
machine in the barns of the wealthy alongside the carriage, the 
rnnabont or the family surrey, used for an occasional spin in 
the park. This observation shows that the bicycle has only 
superseded one kind of horse: the very cheap buggy-horse of 
the livery type. iVnd it is well that it is so, for this horse was 
never much of an object of veterinary treatment, but rather of 
humane sympathy; an infirm, over-driven animal, tortured by 
those men and women who have to get rid of their surplus 
energy by over-exertion of some kind. For these people the 
bicycle, this lifeless machine, is just the thing. It produced the 
“scorcher,” this new human fiend, who fears neither God, man, 
woman, child, beast nor the devil. Whenever I cross a scorcher 
on an open road I say “go ahead,” for I would rather see him 
taking off the flesh from his own ribs than from those of an in¬ 
nocent driving-horse or saddler. Beyond these uses the bicycle 
has no others, for on bad roads and in bad seasons it is a nuisance. 
To be sure, enthusiasts claimed everything for it, and not long 
ago a United States infantry officer predicted that it would sup¬ 
plant the cavalry horse in future warfare. Yet the bicycle-corps 
lately organized in the Graeco-Turkish war were easily routed 
by the Turkish cavalry and had to be disbanded forthwith. 
The other modern invention, the so-called horseless-carriage, 
remains an experiment, or, rather, a “plaything,” as styled by a 
recent writer in the Enguieering World. He points out that 
the time of its operation is limited, that its motor-force is weak 
and that on poor roads these vehicles become unmanageable. 
He concludes by saying that the science of mechanics is far 
away from having solved the problem of producing and storing 
motor-force in railless vehicles in such an economic manner as 
is exhibited by the living horse. If their own scientists ac¬ 
knowledge their failure to construct a machine which will be 
a substitute for the traction-power of the horse, the life-tenure 
of this vehicle will be of short duration, or at least its applica¬ 
tion will be limited by its own shortcomings. 
The depression of the horse-market which we have ex¬ 
perienced during the last few years is a purely local condition 
confined to the United States. If Dr. Volgenan says that “ from 
the four corners of the earth come reports of veterinarians taking 
up other professions or trades,” his geography must be limited to 
the States. For more than twenty years I have followed the 
