A JUDGE OF HORSEFLESH.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XLIX, Issue 12550, 13 July 1905, Page 8

A JUDGE OF HORSEFLESH.

OBSERVATION OF CONFORMA-

TION

Most people who have anything to do %vith horses believe themselves to be good judi>e«; anyhow, they take offence at £ho bare suggestion from anyone else that they are not. Many of them I should call lesser judges scout the idea of asking a.vet. to examine or advise them before making purchase. Some of these would he surprised to learn that the very best judges and largest of dealers.'(-both- as to numbers of horses and prices paid) are in the habit of paying for a vet.'s examination. I think the explanation is to be found in the fact that all who know a horse from :a mule cultivate an eye for conformation, and with opportunities of comparison daily, sooner or later conceive an' ideal horse or standard of outward perfection as to shape and make and general behaviour, and thereafter ;a horse is good, bad or indifferent in their opinion according as he more or less conforms to that ideal. This education of tho eye is not the monopoly of the scigentifically trained or of the cultured, many illiterate men possessing it in larger degree than those with greater opportunity of developing the sense of comparison, the possession of which "sense" is in itself usually considered a proof of high civilisation. There are many degrees of comparison in tho thoughts of the people of this country. Among the Zulus there are none. A man is "good man" or "bad man." They have no conception of a middling man. Where buyers come to grief when acting on their own judgment of horse flesh is their failure to detect infirmities or . causes 'of unsoundness. I am inclined to give the average horseman credit of being as good a judge of general confirmation and suitability as tho average vet., but the latter will often see some damning fault, from the other side of the road, which the horseman has not looked for or thought of until it's effects have been brought home to him. THE VET.'S ADVANTAGE. The horseman sees the animal as a whole; the vet. sees him 'as an engineer views an engine, and with an eye to tho portions of the machine known to most frequently develop faults or subject to greatest friction or strain. He has the advantage of having taken horses to pieces in the dissecting room, as the engineer has done in the machine shop. He knows liow the respective parts ought to fit, and what may bo expected if they do not. A knowledge of the structure of an animal and the purposes for which his various parts are designed is an essential preliminary to a correct judgment .as to soundness. An ideally sound horso has been conceived, just as an ideally formed one has taken root in tho mind of the horseman, and though ft theoretically sound horse is rara avis in terris, yet the anatomist has handled perfect specimens and easily detectu imperfections. Let me give an example of what happens for want of knowledge o.f anatomy, and that not of a kind which must be learned in the dissecting room. A man camo to me to-day to appoint a time for an examination as to soundness, as ho said "he had been took in over the last hoi-se, and found after h© had bought him that he had had two holes punched in the inside of . his nose." I asked him if they gave any trouble, and ho replied in the negative. Asked him if he had looked in any other horse's nose to see if more of the same sort of holes could be found, and h© replied with somo dignity that he had not. "Well," I said, "ir you can show me a horse that_ hasn't such holes I will buy him from you and "make you a present of him." We adjourned' to .a stable where several horses could be examined, and found that on the floor of each nostril every horse had a hole which han very much the appearance of being "punched," as the man said, so clean-cut is it in a healthy animal. If tho reader will look inside his horso s nostrils^ he will see a hole on tho reflected skin near the margin. It is the orifice of the duct or channel which conducts the snrpluse moisture from tho > front of the- eye, and is squeezed into tho corner or top end of

tho canal when the horse blinks. All animals are so provided. Men who refuse to cry at scenes of grief blow their noses in order to dispose of the tears which would otherwise run down their manly cheeks. .SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS. To impress young readers, may I tell another story? It shall be short. Vi hen thousands of horses were being send to South Africa, and the supply of vets, ran out, some of the transports sailed without these officers. On one of them a zealous militia officer in command, who could not distinguish between the nasal discharge of influenza and that of glanders, and had been told (and rightly) that the presence of an ulcer on the membrane was diagonostic of glanders, made the astonishing discovery of my friend of this .morning and proceeded to pistol 180 horses before someone else discovered that other horses had the same "ulcers" that had not shown any nasal discharge or , other symptoms of disease. Tho moral of my sermonette must be obvious. Cultivate the powers of observation Utilise the opportunities at hand. There is no reader of this who cannot open a horse's nostril and find the "hole," and having done so he will never mistake it for an ulcer, even though its margin may share a common inflammation. He will not slaughter John Bull's remounts, nor sell for a trifle a horse that suited as well as any client's horse did him but for "the holes that had been punched in his nose."—"Vet.," in "Farmer and Stock Breeder."