THE EXTENT TO WHICH THE LEG IS CAUGHT UP WHEN OCCULT SPAVIN EXISTS; ALSO THE VIEW OF THE FOOT PRESENTED TO THE SPECTATOR WHO IS PLACED AT THE SIDE OF THE HORSE, WHEN, DURING THIS DISEASE, THE LEG IS IN MOTION. ] Such is the origin of the disease: some authors assert the synovial membrane has been ruptured; some, on the contrary, say the bone has been injured. The author, knowing nothing, cannot tell how the disease begins, but he knows that from the date of its origin the horse is lame; very bad one day, but better, probably, the next. Generally improved after rest, and always badly limping subsequent to work; never to be depended upon, for proprietors say the animal is sure, wherever its services are required, to be obstinately lame. Usually the wretched horse is blistered; setoned; blistered again; and, at last, fired. All failing to do the smallest good, the horse is next turned out for three months; while at grass, the poor animal, with an acutely diseased joint, which is enlarged and stiffened by mistaken treatment, has to take one step for every morsel it bites of poor and watery food. It is forced to travel long and far, or literally to starve; its body must rest upon the ulcerated bone, and the weight even be increased by the pendulous head before enough herbage can be cropped to sustain the life. At every step two ulcerated surfaces grate upon each other and are forced violently together; while anguish consumes the flesh, the nature of the food may keep in the life, but cannot otherwise than depress the spirits. Besides, the horse has been turned from a sheltered stall where it was daily groomed, into a field where it has to brave the utmost stress of the elements, uncared for and unnoticed. At the end of three months the horse is taken up: to the master's disgust, it is found to be not looking smarter and not to be going sounder. More routine treatment is now permitted, and the diseased limb undergoes further torture; another three months is passed, and the lameness becomes worse than ever. The proprietor is loath to part with his property; but he often says "he wishes the animal were dead." At last, losing all patience, and never having possessed any care for the life which had suffered injury in his service, the horse is lent to some carter, who undertakes to "work it sound." This process never, in occult spavin, succeeds; the wretched quadruped gets worse day by day, till neither oaths nor lashes can prevent misery from limping on three legs. At length, worked to a skeleton, the horse is returned to its proprietor, who, inviting pity upon _his_ misfortune, that life will feel, and that horse-flesh is subject to the ailments affecting all creatures which breathe, orders his servant to take "the beast" to the knacker's and to get what he can for it.