On purging, perhaps, Mr. F. decides too much on authority, that such a medicine does, no harm when inoperative. Of the gradual and alterative purges, as they are called, we have no opinion, conceiving that purges and alterants are different in their nature and intents, and should be kept separate. The balsamic balls in asthma, and those for such dangerous cases as diseases in the bladder and kidneys, are indeed idle common place in the place where they are found. To prescribe in such uncertain and painful complaints for the poor mute horse, would require more medical knowledge, more wit, and more experience, than are possessed by the whole College of Physicians. But Mr. F. on such occasions of default and of folly, let us venture to tell him, generally serves us up with something good, to make amends. His notions on the subject of bleeding are sterling; also on the important point of obtaining genuine drugs, which should always be sought at Apothecaries' Hall. Ever humane, he justly remarks on the cruelty of La Fosse's foolish attempt to cure glanders, by trepanning. This, old Snape assured us, he had tried, without the smallest good effect. And if we remember correctly, we purchased of him a mare about the year 1780, which he had trepanned, and which mare afterwards wasted away and died, in the possession of Ellis Were, the banker. "Foundered in the Feet. The cause of this disease arises from violent exercise, riding hard upon tony grounds, or turnpike-roads; young horses are most liable to it: likewise pressure on the inside parts of the feet, from the hollowness or bad form of the common shoes, which causes inflammation in the internal parts of the feet, and occasions too quick a circulation of the blood to the vessels within the hoof, which become ruptured, and the blood forced out of these vessels causes a separation of the fibres on the coffin-bone from those of the hoof, and lameness is the consequence. The part of the foot in general most affected, is the toe or front part. The custom of riding horses into water when they are hot, never ought to be allowed; or even washing the feet in cold water; the sudden chilk stops circulation, and brings on this and many other dangerous complaints. We have known instances of horses losing their hoofs by mortification, brought on by exposing them to cold water when the horse was very much heated. What I mean by exposing, is the practice of riding them into rivers or ponds, which, amongst a set of ignorant ostlers and post-boys, is called cooling or refreshing them; I have noticed it at many inns, but particularly at that most admirable inn, the Angel, at Ferrybridge, in Yorkshire." "The sole being the main support of the horse's foot, should never be pared, except the loose parts out; for if the feet be ever so strong, sound, or good, if the sole is constantly pared, or the drawing-knife used every time he is shod, he will be tender footed, and, in time, have the appearance of being foundered." On strains and wind-galls, Mr. F. seems to entertain but superficial ideas. The subject is diffi cult. "Wind gall, a flatulent tu mour." .that mour."-How so? since when puntured, it emits a glary fluid, with which it seems replete. The account of the supposed blood spavin, is poor antiquated stuff indeed. Windgall is, to be sure,a misuomer, but since the term is established and in use, we say t such swellings, whether in hinder For fore-legs, are windgalls still. We have opened them. So Mr. F. has cured bone spavins and ringbones" I have found," says he, "this plan to answer the most ohstinate cases." Pity: he did not treat us with a detail of those successful cures. Generally orthodox, and an advocate for the bar-shoe, we were surprised to find in this author's book, no recommendation of the loose stable. Staggers or Epilepsy." Most persons who have wrote (written) on this disease, call it the staggers, but it is epilepsy." Courage, Doctor Flint! you may do wonders in time, although in your opinion, the cause of a horse's wind being broken, cannot be explained; yet surely, poor creatures, they go through alternate heats and colds enough, to be the cause of such effect. But a truce to pecking holes in the coat of this gentleman's book, which we shall, finish with a smile at bis aloetic purge, p. 105, consisting of only eight different articles, one of them, of all things in the world-laudanum. This does not indeed form. " a kind of a heater and a kind of a cooler," in the farrier's style; but is really a kind of a loosener and a kind of a binder; or, to play fast and loose, in the belly of a horse. We have thus, out of compliment to an eminent sportsman, bestowed a long criticism upon a short book; quitting it and him, with our best sporting respects, t AFFECTION AND SAGACITY OF ELEPHANTS. THE following circumstances relative to two elephants, brought few years since to Paris, are given from a French journal.↑ a "The morning after their arrival these animals were put in possession of their new habitation. The first conducted to it was the male, who issued from his cage with precaution, and seemed to enter his apartment with a degree of suspicion. His first care was to reconnoitre the place. He examined each bar with his trunk, and tried their solidity by shaking them. Care had been taken to place on the outside the large screws by which they are held together. These he sought out, and having found them, tried to turn them, but was not able. When he arrived at the portcullis, which separates the two apartments, he observed that it was fixed only by an iron bar, which rose' in a perpendicular direction. He raised it with his trunk, pushed up the door, and entered into the second apartment, where he received his breakfast. He ate it quietly, and appeared to be perfectly easy. "During this time people were endeavouring to make the female enter... We still recollect the mutual attachment of these two animals, and with what difficulty they were parted, and induced to travel separately. From the time of their departure they had not seen each other; not even at Cambray, where they passed the winter. They had only been sensible that they were near neighbours. The male never laid down, but always stood upright, or leaned against the bars of his cage, and kept watch for his female, who laid down and slept every night. On the least noise, or the smallest alarm, he sent forth a cry to give notice to his companion. "The joy which they experienced on seeing each other after so long a separation may be readily imagined. "When the female entered, she sent forth a cry expressive only of the pleasure which she felt on finding herself at liberty. She did not at first observe the male, who was busy feeding in the second apartment. The latter also did not immediately discover that his companion was so near him; but, the keeper having called him, he turned round, and immediately the two animals rushed towards each other, and sent forth cries of joy so animated and loud that they shook the whole hall. They breathed also through their trunks with such violence that the blast resembled an impetuous gust of wind. The joy of the female was the most lively; she expressed it by quickly flapping her ears, which she made to move with astonishing velocity, and drew her trunk over the body of the male with the utmost tender ness. She, in particular, applied it to his ear, where she kept it a long time, and, after having drawn it over the whole body of the male, would often move it affectionately towards her own mouth. The male did the same thing over the body of the female, but his joy was more concentrated. He seemed to express it by his tears, which fell from his eyes in abundance." HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPES. M. De Chateau Briand, in his Recollections of America, and his Visit to the Savages, says, "As VOL. XLVI.-No. 274, to the perils of the journey, they were undoubtedly great, and those who make nice calculations on the subject, will probably not be disposed to travel among foreign nations. People, however, alarm themselves too much in this respect. When I was exposed to any danger in America, it was always local, and caused by my own imprudence. For instance, when I was at the cataract of Niagara, the Indian ladder being broken which had formerly been there, I wished, in spite of my guide's representations, to descend to the bottom of the fall by means of a rock, the craggy points of which projected. It was about two hundred feet high, and I made the attempt. In spite of the roaring cataract and frightful abyss which gaped beneath me, my head diđ not swim, and I descended about forty feet, but here the rock became smooth and vertical, nor were there any longer roots or fissures for my feet to rest upon. I remained hanging all my length by my hands, neither being able to re-ascend or proceed, feeling my fingers open by degrees from the weight of my body, and considering death inevitable. There are few men who have in the course of their whole lives passed two such minutes as Į experienced over the yawning horrors of Niagara. My hands at length opened, and I fell. most extraordinary good fortune I alighted on the naked rock. It was hard enough to have dashed me in pieces, and yet I did not feel much injured. I was within half an inch of the abyss, yet bad not rolled into it; but when the cold water began to penetrate my skin, I perceived that I had not escaped so easily as I at first imagined. I felt insupportable pain in the left X By arni. arm. I had broken it above the elbow. My guide, who observed me from above, and to whom I made signs, ran to look for some savages, who with much trouble drew me up by birchen cords, and carried me to their habitations. "This was not the only risk I ran at Niagara. On arriving at the cataract, I alighted and fastened my horse's bridle round my arm. As I leaned forward to look down, a rattlesnake moved in the neighbouring bushes. The horse took fright, reared on his hind legs, and approached the edge of the precipice; I could not disengage my arm from the bridle, and the animal with increasing alarm drew me after him. His feet were already on the point of slipping over the brink of the gulph, and he was kept from destruction by nothing but the reins. My doom seemed to be fixed, when the animal, astonished at the new danger which he all at once perceived, made a final effort, and sprung ten feet from the edge of the precipice." ON COURSING. favourable opinion of his candour and moderation. If I had reviled it in the forcible language of Thomson, or exclaimed as bitterly against it as Bingley, then I should! have merited his keenest sarcasms; but in thus endeavouring to set me aright, he evidently labours under a misapprehension, for I have not asserted that hunting at the present day is a barbarism; on the contrary, that in the tyrannical age of William, who depopulated and laid waste whole villages to be converted into forests to preserve his game, and who afterwards enacted laws more sanguinary than the beasts they were meant to protect, then, I boldly maintain, that bunting was a remnant of gothic barbarity. The severe laws which he introduced, making it a capital offence to destroy a beast, and loss of eyes or hands for minor infringements of these arbitrary laws, speak volumes in defence of my opinion, that the people were then environed round by monkish dark, ness and barbarity. In fact, a centary had elapsed before these mists were dispelled, and probably would have continued centuries longer, if the enlightened mind of To the Editor of the Sporting Ma- Richard Cœur de Lion had not SIR, gazine. viewed them in the most odious light, and magnanimously repealed TURNING over the pages of such tyrannical edicts. In reality, your last Magazine, I was sure to place the life of a man on an prised at perceiving an ungenerous equality with the life of a beast, conclusion drawn from my loose subverts the laws of God, and exobservations on "coursing." Your hibits a striking proof of the vile correspondent like myself appears ignorance which then overspread to be a great admirer of this de- the country. And even as far back lightful exercise, and speaks of it as Edward the Fourth, when civiwith the same degree of ardour; lization had worked wonders to but that he should so far forget the surmount these difficulties, a genmaxim he adduces, as to wander tleman of respectable connections from his subject, and unjustly re- was put to death for merely wishproach me with stigmatising hunting that the horns of a favourite ing as a barbarism, argues no very buck, which the king had wanton ly ly destroyed, was in his belly that advised him to kill it. But by the bye, in defending myself from these unjust insinuations, I have unconsciously been holding up the game laws to indignation; be this as it may, if your correspondent is prepared to deny what I assert, and maintain that hunting was not even then a barbarism, he will manifestly have the worst of the argument; it is, however, too late in the day to enter into the merits of this subject, or probably some additional light may be thrown on this long disputed question. If hunting, as he justly observes, be objected to on the score of humanity, then coursing must be liable to the same objections; but still, as a keen pursuer, he must gild over these scruples of fellow feeling, and reconcile his conscience to the sport. If, however, commiseration for the sufferings of the brute creation be too deeply implanted in his breast, then I would recommend him to refrain from field sports altogether; for few amusements indeed, although glossed over by all-conquering custom, can be pursued without necessarily intrenching on the rights of humanity. Notwithstanding what I have asserted, I trust that in every argument I may be involved, I shall meet with correspondents of equal candour and moderation to G. M.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant, July 13, 1815. Z. B. MARINE METAPHOR, OR SEA To the Editor of the Sporting Magazine. SIR, and easy class, possess a fund of wit peculiar to themselves; is the case similar with the same classes of other nations? Many years have passed since I was at sea, or in the habits of conversing with seafaring people, and the two following metaphors may be quite forgotten, and succeeded by hundreds of others of equal point, sea wit having an inexhaustible fund. An ass braying very loud in the hearing of some sailors ashore, says one of them"Hark of the breaker, we shall have rain." The ass, it seems, obtained the name of breaker among our seamen, and was generally so called by them fifty years ago, from the analogy of his voice sounding like the noise of the breakers, or the water breaking Over sunken rocks. Another, twenty years afterwards, indeed said in my hearing, during a heavy gale of wind, "d- my eyes, but it blows young monkies," alluding to the young monkies in India, and those countries where they are bred, being blown from the trees in high winds. The old seamen were excessively and seriously averse to any person whistling on board, when there was the expectation of a gale of wind, as if they really believed that the expulsion of wind from the human body would actually increase a gale, or have such tendency in a miraculous way. In fact, no seaman was ever known to whistle under such cir-, cumstances; on the contrary, in a calm at sea, and under great want of wind, all hands, men and boys, from stem to stern, aloft and be low, were whistling at no allowance-another term for no restriction. A want of tobacco was IT is generally agreed, that our styled a West Country famine, and an allowance of liquor, not accord. . ing seamen and females of the free x 2 |