A treatise on the horse : its diseases, lameness, and improvement : in which is laid down the proper method of shoeing the different kinds of feet ... / by William Osmer.

Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the horse : its diseases, lameness, and improvement : in which is laid down the proper method of shoeing the different kinds of feet ... / by William Osmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    here, in England, undertake to breed from those fine Eastern horses, in less than ten descents, a race full as coarse and inelegant as the black Lincolnshire waggon-horse. [No. 5, of plate 2.] And this he might accomplish solely by observing the defects of nature, always keeping his cattle on low wet ground, with rich herbage, and by ex- posing them to all the inclemencies of weather. Nature then clothes their legs and heels, mane and tail, in long shaggy vestments, and the looseness of fibre, which has been super-induced by humidity of the atmosphere, is abundantly filled up with the gross green feeding concomitant of such a climate. As a contrast to the swampy country we have just contemplated, let us turn to our own more favoured breeding districts. Craven, in Yorkshire, the Salopian Hills, the downs of Cambridge and Suffolk (Newmarket), and a few score more such high and dry soils, ever favourable to the breeding and rearing, and bringing forward for use the best of this country’s boast. Of the original stock of Arab horse, it is affirmed by many people of vera- city, that the air of the desert is so free from vapours, that there is not moisture or damp suf- ficient to affect the brightest gun with the least shade of rust, after laying it abroad for a whole night. The different effects, then, of humid or dry air are worth observing : if you hang up a cord or string of any kind, it becomes contracted or re- laxed, according to the degrees of humidity or of