BROKEN WIND. [Illustration: CONVULSIVE SPASM, INDUCED BY FATIGUE, IN A BROKEN-WINDED HORSE.] =Broken wind= in the horse approaches very nearly to dry asthma in the human being. Man, however, can suit his work to his capabilities; but all horses have only one employment, which, to be sure, may differ in its intensity; still, the most afflicted animal always has to perform the severest kind of draught. Let any person propose that individuals having dry asthma should pull loaded trucks, to earn their bread or to purchase a right to live; the cruelty of such a proposition would be apparent to the dullest sense. Yet is it the horse's doom that, no matter with what disease it may be afflicted, the animal must work or die. Old or sick, weak or disabled, still the body's toil must earn the creature's food and the master's profit. Spasm or agony can excuse no pause; let the sufferer even slacken the space sufficiently to mitigate in some degree the pangs it endures, and the long whip, aided by the harsh voice of the driver, will urge the flagging cripple onward. The horse has no words to plead with; the signs of its distress are not understood; the law which assumes to protect it is a delusion; the animal is given up, helpless, friendless, and unpitied, to the almost unrestrained barbarity of its master. It is born doomed to live in solitude, to wear its life out under the goad, and to yield up existence in a knacker's yard. "Broken wind" is a sad affliction; it is the more sad because no men but the very careless or the very poor will keep an animal thus diseased. The author has known it to be a frequent reason given by the better class of horse proprietors for having the life destroyed; which decision may have been quickened by the fact that the horse is generally old before this disease appears. In the knowledge of the writer there is no recorded instance of a colt having "broken wind." The malady is usually witnessed after the adult age has been attained, or during the latter period of life, whether the affection has been naturally induced or aggravated by the cruelty of man. It is said to have been produced suddenly; thus a man has been reported to have ridden an untrained horse after the hounds, and so have provoked the disorder. Another is asserted to have galloped a nag with a stomach loaded either with food or water, and thus to have broken the wind. Doubtless the seeds of the disorder may by either process have been sown; but that the disease was fully developed after either incident, is more than doubtful.