308 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
only removed with considerable trouble by the use of a 
strong pair of dissecting forceps. 
The mass, from the length of time it had remained in 
the crop, had become offensive in the highest degree; it 
was therefore desirable to remove every portion, an object 
which was more readily accomplished by washing out the 
crop, which, therefore, I do not think “quite uncalled for.” 
I have since operated in several cases, and in every 
j instance my “ unwarrantable ” operation has been followed 
j with perfect recovery. 
I mentioned Dr. Horner’s criticism to one of the highest 
living Zoologists, who stated, that on one occasion, when at 
the celebrated anatomical school of Joshua Brooks, a vulture 
swallowed a rat which had been killed by poison, and which 
was immediately extracted by an operation, after which the 
wound was sewn up, and with so little injury to the health 
of the vulture, that it lived many years after Brookes’s death, 
in the Gardens of the Zoological Society. 
In one of his letters in the present volume, Dr. Horner 
states, that “ Truth is his aim, and that he is always ready 
to read the remarks of others, when expressed with a due 
regard to courtesy;” but the dogmatical employment of such 
terms as “ unwarrantable,” “ quite uncalled for,” &c., are 
scarcely consistent with the courtesy he expects from others. 
W. B. Tegetmeiee, Tottenham, Middlesex. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER’S PONY. 
(Continued from page 170.) 
THE DUMB SLAVE. 
Histoeians (not of little ponies, but of great people,) 
have frequently endeavoured to mark out particular epochs 
by inviting especial attention to certain notable improve¬ 
ments in men’s manners. Thus the abolition of human 
sacrifices; the introduction of alphabetic writing; the 
mitigation, or abolition of all the evils of personal slavery; 
and the respect paid to woman, and her acknowledged po¬ 
sition in society, have each been used as land-marks, or 
guide-posts, in their way, to note that one rough stage had 
been got over, and another and a smoother one was about 
to commence in the course of civilisation. 
One test of this kind has been brought prominently for¬ 
ward by a recent writer on Grecian history. He contends 
that it is an infallible sign of an advance made in refine¬ 
ment, when men have learnt to abstain from maiming, 
disfiguring, and mutilating the persons of their slaves and 
prisoners, and otherwise ill-treating them. Contending that 
the conduct of the Greeks was humanity itself in this 
respect, when contrasted with that of their barbarian con¬ 
temporaries, he largely relies on this one established fact as 
conclusive evidence of moral superiority. To me the remark 
seems to carry with it much weight; and, if its truth cannot 
be gainsayed, I almost think it will be found capable of a 
larger and wider application. 
When men no longer treat their wives like servants, their 
servants like slaves, their slaves like brute-beasts, surely a 
little further practical exercise of enlightened benevolence 
should be expected to bring them to treat their very dogs, 
i horses, and cattle, with kindness, and with a due respect to 
the handiwork of Him who made us and them. Unusual 
attention is now-a-days paid to the study of Natural History, 
as illustrating the principles of natural religion ; one conse¬ 
quence of which ought to be, a ready recognition of certain 
natural rights as belonging to all living creatures, under 
one common superintending Providence. The contempla¬ 
tion of the great truths of natural religion (unaided \»j belter 
and purer lights) would seem to have led some of the 
gravest heathen doctors into inculcating, as religious duties, 
certain preposterous and extreme attentions to be paid to 
the lower animals. But, on the other hand, the specula¬ 
tions of recent travellers would lead us to infer that the 
oriental nations do many of them still preserve not a 
few of the traditions of the patriarchal times, with many 
manners, customs, and time-honoured institutions, which 
have with them survived the weightier obligations of a pure 
religion. Some explanation certainly is required for the 
anomaly that, in this religious and enlightened community 
and century in which we live, a greater amount of barbarity 
July 21. j 
marks our treatment of some of the lower animals (the ' 
horse in particular), than if we were living in a Maliomedan 
country, and in an earlier age. Not long ago, a Turk was 
commenting on the miserable treatment which our horses 
experienced in a great London thoroughfare, and being ! 
near Exeter Hall, he finished by remarking, “ but I con¬ 
clude there is nothing about them in your book.” Here he 
was wrong, however. Even in France, and generally in 
catholic countries on the continent, where the Bible is but 
little read, men have, some how or other, learnt that there 
is a limit (not very hard to be ascertained) providentially 
set to the dominion which we exercise over the brute crea¬ 
tion. Cuvier tells us, as I have already informed your 
readers, that ten horses are used up in England for one on 
the continent. 
Seeing the immense popularity of Mrs. B. Stowe’s philan¬ 
thropic exposure of our neighbour’s faults, one would hope 
that a philippic on our own barbarities towards our own 
dumb slaves might be equally popular. The writer of these 
Pony Essays fully sympathises with much of the public 
indignation which is being continually directed against some 
of the evils of our factory system ; and he laments the 
needless waste of human life arising from our operatives 
being pent up the whole year in close alleys and unwhole¬ 
some abodes, getting too little exercise, and doing too much 
work. It is a grave fact, that three factory children die 
under age, for two of the children of the farm-labourer; and 
that whilst many farm-labourers attain old age, few factory 
hands are so fortunate. All this is very bad; and if emi¬ 
gration should continue it will be found to be very wasteful 
too. But all this affords no excuse for the inhumanity 
wherewith the poor cab-horse is treated in the sendee of the 
same enlightened and humane public, whilst it is so pro¬ 
perly holding up its hands against negro slavery and the 
factory system. 
I have said that the factory system will turn out to be 
very wasteful, so soon as emigration shall have taught us 1 
the real value of the labouring class. In respect to the J 
humbler “ labourer,” however, whom I immediately treat of, 
there is less difficulty in arriving at a precise result, because j 
the deterioration of his frame, and his premature wasting 
away, are matters which can be directly made subjects of 
calculation. A gentleman purchases a stout, sound, young 
horse for about TOO ; after two years’ tugging at that lum¬ 
bering, ostentatious, half-ton of wood and iron, in which the 
honourable gentleman’s personal consequence is duly no¬ 
tified to the world at large, the animal is found to be done- 
up, from having been employed, in fact, doing the work of 
two horses in his single person. He is then sold for about 
Tl(j, and forthwith is transferred to a hack-stable, and to a 
life of unbroken toil and hard usage; this, too, with a frame 
no longer sound and healthy, in consequence of ordinary 
bad stable-management, and a postponement of all the 
natural habits, instincts, and requirements of the animal to 
the caprice of fashion, and the questionable sagacity of a 
groom. Such an animal, if left in the farmer’s hands, or 
if in the possession of a foreigner (albeit the same were a 
catholic, or a Turk), might last, say, twenty years. In our 
‘honourable’ and humane friend’s service he just lasted 
two. Look at the difference—TOO, less T16, is T44 loss in 
two years, or £22 a-year. But TOO, distributed over twenty 
years, comes to but T3 a-year. The difference, T19 a-year, 
or one shilling a-day, gives us the actual cost of our tyranny: 
the money we lose by treating the best of brute servants as 
the most abject of slaves. This is the point from which I 
would wish to commence a comparison of the expense of a 
more natural and considerate treatment of our “pony” with 
the costly bungling which is all the fashion in this country. 
If I can show that bad, unnatural, usage is expensive, people 
may be inclined also to think it wrong.— Vibgyoe. 
(To be continued.) 
A FEW MORE PHLOXES. 
Phlox eaniculata (Panicled-flowered Phlox).—This is 
the oldest but one to be found in all our lists of Thloxes, 
and it is one of the hardiest too. This good-natured plant 
will live and flower in almost any situation; either in the 
