STUDY ON CRIBBING-CAUSES-PREVENTION AND CURE. 
143 
Like a bad example , cribbing is contagious , the contagion of 
imitation . With ordinary mangers and racks, though the ration 
may be plenty, if for several months young horses are placed 
alongside an old cribber, three times out of five they will become 
cribbers also. 
Cribbing is not transmitted by heredity; I have seen for 
about twelve years at the same breeder’s, two stallions—a bay nor- 
mand and a black percheron—both confirmed cribbers. Both 
had about fifty colts, and none became cribbers. However, crib¬ 
bing is not a morbid consequence of disposition or of constitution, 
but only, in most cases, of badly disposed hay-racks or man¬ 
gers, or of the insufficient size of the alimentary ration. 
It is evident to any one who has often and attentively ob¬ 
served horses which begin to crib, especially in eating straw, 
that this aspiration of air takes place first unknowingly; that they 
are unconscious of this act, and surprised by the new sensation of 
the passage and rush of the air in their pharynx. 
It is very probable that this sensation is agreeable , for they at¬ 
tempt to renew it, so that animals which at first cribbed twice 
in fifteen minutes, in a few months will do it ten or fifteen times 
in the same period. When the habit is at this point, if the object 
upon which the animal takes a point d’appui is taken away from 
him, he will look for another, and will find it. Then cribbing is 
a thoughtful act , and the horse which begins to crib in taking 
hold of his straw, ends by doing it with hay, with oats, and when 
his food is all ate, with the manger and the hay-rack. The sen¬ 
sation that the horse has in cribbing must be that of an agreea¬ 
ble coolness, for the temperature of the air which passes slowly 
to the pharynx during the normal respiration has raised in pass¬ 
ing through the nasal cavities, while the air aspired through 
the mouth lias not had sufficient time to become warm. It is a 
sensation of coolness analogous to the one we have when we sud¬ 
denly ingurgitate air. 
XII. 
The cribber which begins in ingurgitating air, soon finishes by 
swallowing it. It is then only under the influence of this gas 
