A PORTION OF SKIN, TAKEN FROM A FARCIED HORSE, INJECTED WITH MERCURY. ] How very numerous the absorbents of the skin are, may be conjectured from the subjoined engraving of a prepared specimen--and not a very successful one either--of a piece of farcied skin, when deprived of hair. In this case, the animal suffered under the large or common form of the disease. In the button variety, the tumors would only be smaller, of a more even size, and far more numerous. Farcy is, by the generality of practitioners, regarded as a more tractable disease than glanders. Certainly the course of the disorder is arrested much easier; but, to cure the malady, there is a constitution to renovate and a virus to destroy. Is it in the power of medicine to restore the health and strength, which have been underfed, sapped by a foul atmosphere, and exhausted by overwork? Tonics may prop up or stimulate for a time; but the drunkard and the opium-eater, among human beings, can inform us that the potency of the best-selected and the choicest drugs, most judiciously prescribed and carefully prepared, is indeed very limited. What, then, can be hoped for in an animal whose treatment is generally an affair of pounds, shillings, and pence? Sulphate of copper or of iron, oak-bark, Cayenne pepper, and cantharides, probably, are the chief medicines the practitioner will give. With such the horse may be patched up; it may even return to work. But at what a risk! It carries about the seeds of a disorder contagious to the human species, and in man even more terrible than in the quadruped. Is it lawful, is it right, to save an avaricious master the chance of a few shillings, and to incur the risk of poisoning an innocent person? The author thinks not. Therefore he will give no directions how to arrest the progress of farcy. The horse, once contaminated, is, indeed, very rarely or never cured. The animal, after the veterinary surgeon has shaken hands with the proprietor and departed, too often bears about an enlarged limb, which impedes its utility, and, at any period, may break forth again with more than the virulence of the original affection. [Illustration: A GENTLEMAN'S SERVANT OUT OF PLACE.] CHAPTER XII. LIMBS--THEIR ACCIDENTS AND THEIR DISEASES. OSSEOUS DEPOSITS--SPAVIN. "One horse could wear out two pairs of legs," is an old jockey's phrase. Most men, when purchasing a dumb slave, pay great attention to the lower extremities. If an animal be used up or has performed hard work, the indications are sure to be found on those parts; but what a comment does the language and the act referred to pass upon the conduct of those masters, the history of whose treatment, or rather whose abuse of a living creature, is thus sought for and often found upon a breathing frame! [Illustration: A PARK NAG WITH BONE SPAVIN LED OUT OF THE STABLE.]