continuing the present citation, as in what follows therein he differs diametrically from Mayhew, and he declines to follow servilely in the path even of those he most respects; but Mayhew himself could hardly object to his action in this respect when he says: ‘Veterinary surgeons display ignorance in nothing more than in being servile copyists.’ Not that the writer pretends to be a veterinary surgeon. He is only a practical man who has had a very wide and long experience amongst horses in many countries, and has been a very close observer of everything touching their feet and legs especially, and is now only offering the result of his so-gained experience for what it may be worth. Almost from the beginning of his connection with horses, he declined to consider the legs as a separate part from the body of the horse, and refused to believe that four sets of them were necessary to wear out one body, as, if such were the case, the horse would be an incomplete and niggardly gift made by Nature to man; and from the outset of his religious education, received at his mother’s knee, he has always been taught, and in his various wanderings he has never had reason to doubt, that Nature made everything complete, and nothing in vain. Hence he inferred that the horse’s body was never made stronger than his legs and feet, and that these, when understood, will be found to be ‘fearfully and wonderfully made,’ and in every respect harmonising with the rest of his structure, and equal to their task.
‘Impecuniosus’ says truly: ‘The prevalent idea
