any opinions or doubts I may entertain on the subject. But although it must be quite clear that where a horse does make this noise, it must proceed from some cause out of the ordinary course of some of the internal organs, we are still left quite in the dark as to in what and where that departure is. It may be inferred that it is an obstruction in the organs of respiration; but what positive proof have we even of this? Horses have been dissected that were roarers, and some obstruction somewhere has been found; but others have undergone the same process, and no obstruction at all has been found: this shows that obstructions are not invariably the cause of roaring. Some are greatly distressed if put into a fast pace; while with others, who perhaps make quite as much noise, we do not find any apparent distress. Query in the former case does not the distress arise from a cause independent of the roaring, namely, general bad wind, with which the animal may be afflicted as well as by roaring? I have very strong doubts in my own mind whether, where a horse makes a very loud noise, it does proceed from obstruction. We will call the windpipe of a horse a cylinder-so is a piece of tin, or wooden pipe, or the neck of a quart bottle. Now blow, or rather breathe, down the neck of the bottle: it will produce a noise not very unlike that of a loud and confirmed roarer. Introduce a piece of cork of half the size of the cavity of the neck of the bottle near the bottom, or half way down: so far from the sound increasing by the obstruction, it will be found to diminish, and diminish in a greater or lesser degree in accordance with the diminished or increased size of the obstruction made. This would almost tempt me to suppose that there is a possibility that an increased and unusual concavity, or hollowness existed somewhere, and that this occasioned the loud and hollow sound we hear from the respiration or the inspiration of the horse, acting on the windpipe as our breath will on the neck of the bottle, though I in no shape give it as an opinion that it does so. To soften the sound of the French horn the hand is introduced; this is an obstruction, but it acts in an opposite way to increasing sound contracting the diameter of a cylinder will alter sound, and render it more acute, but an obstruction in the cylinder diminishes the sound of it. Many persons have heard the wind whistle and roar through a narrow passage between two streets; but I believe they did not hear it do so if the passage was half full of people, though this created an obstruction to the wind's course; and any one who has lived, as I have done, in the middle of Salisbury Plain, has heard the wind roar very comfortably where there was no obstruction in its way. Various circumstances of different kinds have, I must allow, very much shaken my belief that obstruction in the windpipe itself is the cause of roaring. That it might create a difficulty of breathing, and consequently produce distress and a wheezing noise, I should think probable; but wheezing and roaring are quite different: many persons labouring under the effects of a bad cough, emit a loud and hollow sound when they do cough; but, should a person with an enlarged sore throat do the same thing, we should hear no hollow sound from one so afflicted. This bears a close analogy to obstructions in the larynx of the horse. I once saw the windpipe of a coach-mare who was destroyed as a confirmed

roarer; here the windpipe had totally lost its elasticity for many inches, probably arising from inflammation of its internal lining, though there was no great diminution of its cavity; this, I should say, might always produce roaring whenever it might occur. I saw another of a cart-mare who became on a sudden a roarer for a short time, but it went off; she died, however, shortly afterwards. From a very natural suspicion that the cause of the roaring might have also caused her death, her throat was examined: a large ulcer was found close to the glottis; still for many weeks she had breathed freely. Now, though I have ventured a doubt that every obstruction in the windpipe must necessarily produce roaring, I should imagine that some kinds certainly would: for instance, if we breathe through any straight cylinder of equal diameter all through, and open at bottom, we produce no sound; completely stop up the passage of the breath, either at bottom or any part of the cylinder, sound is produced; though partially stopping it acts reversely by diminishing it: so if in any of the air passages there was any elastic membraneous or moveable obstruction that drawing the breath could move, so as to allow a passage for it, I should say this would produce roaring by the breath meeting the substance-before, of course, that substance gave way. In illustration of what I mean, take a cylinder; cut a piece of writing-paper of the size of the inner diameter of the tube; then, with some glue, fix a small portion of the rim of the paper to the inside of the tube, so as to allow the paper to move on breathing freely through the tube; the breath will pass through, but will make a very loud noise in so doing; it acts, till the paper is forced to bend or yield, as if the tube was totally stopped up in some part, and produces a roaring noise in the tube, and, if its elasticity was such as to make it regularly return to its original situation, would produce the same sound as often as the breath met the opposition, the sound increasing in accordance with the quickness and force with which the breath came against the paper: so, I conceive, would such kind of obstruction act on the air passages.

Whistling, I have no doubt, does often proceed from a contraction of some air passage; or rather, I should think, from an undue portion of air, from some cause, being forced through a small passage, which would be tantamount to our breathing down the pipe of a key. But, from repeated observation, I am inclined to think that the whistle by no means unfrequently proceeds from the upper part of the nostril; in some elucidation of which, I have a relation who, in cases of a cold in his head, is at times a confirmed whistler, and can be heard the length of a large room: forcibly blowing the nose several times in succession stops this in a temporary way, and, on the cold leaving him, the whistle goes away also.

Eques states, in alluding to Nimrod, that he considered whistling "the ne plus ultra of the disease." I quite agree that Nimrod was the ne plus ultra of a sporting writer; but, with every proper respect for his memory as regards his talents, I by no means agree that he was the ne plus ultra of authority on all matters connected with sporting or horses: of racing or race-horses he knew, comparatively speaking, nothing. He had collected much information on hunting matters from his friends, from huntsmen, and also, indeed, from ob

servation; but, so far as real practical knowledge of hounds and hunting goes, I should say that R. Viner, Esq. (notwithstanding his having promulgated a great deal of his knowledge of those matters in his truly practical and excellent work, "Notitia Venatica") has more of the same commodity left behind than Nimrod ever possessed. What Viner says is really authority.

Now, as to whistling being the worst stage of roaring, I infer that, if whistling is to be called roaring at all, and if it is the worst stage of it, in accordance with the usual progress of any disease, we first suffer from it in its milder form, for however brief space of time it may last, before we arrive at its climax. We might therefore be led to conclude that whistlers usually begin by roaring. Now, I believe that is by no means the case, I having known whistling end in roaring; but I never knew a roarer become a mere whistler. I can only say, though I regret being forced to differ from so talented a writer as Nimrod, that, if I had a confirmed roarer, 1 should be glad to take the whistle in exchange. I have no doubt many horses that do whistle are often found to be bad-winded horses, and consequently distressed when going; but I must doubt the distress arising from the simple whistle: there is "something more in the wind."

In allusion to the remark that Eques states Nimrod to have made -namely, that whistling is the worst stage of roaring-assuming it a fact that it proceeded from the extreme contraction of the windpipe, he must not only have known a great deal more than I know, but he must have known twice as much as those who know ten times more than me, before he could positively assert this to be the true cause of whistling. But, supposing it does proceed from some obstruction, it does not positively follow that an obstruction that might be sufficient to produce a peculiar sound would, to any certainty, be also sufficient to produce distress as to inspiration; for Nature always bountifully supplies her creatures with more than the means of carrying on all the functions of Nature: she gives an animal two jugular veins, to carry on the stream of life: if, in doing this, she had only given what was indispensably necessary, if the animal should lose one by injury, he would possibly die or become most seriously impaired in health or vigour; whereas we know this is not found to be the case. She gives a horse sinews to support his frame, and all the exertion that, in a natural state, he would make use of: if she gave this, and only this, how would those sinews bear the addition of sixteen stone across a country, at a pace that, in point of continuance, he would never voluntarily keep up? If the space of the windpipe was only just sufficient for the passage of the quantity of air necessary to respiration, most probably any contraction of that space would be highly detrimental to the animal. But there is no reason to suppose she has in this one particular departed from her general rule; so I infer that, supposing contraction of the windpipe was the cause of whistling or roaring, the sound might be produced without respiration being materially impeded by it.

With respect to grunters, to whom Eques alludes, it is quite clear that the grunt which many horses make on being threatened with a blow, turning round in the stall, or on other occasions, is simply the effect of a sudden contraction of the abdominal muscles caused by a

sudden effort, and is totally independent of the wind. Let one man, in joke, strike, or all but strike, another in the abdomen, nine times out of ten the man so threatened will give the selfsame grunt as a horse threatened in the same way; both are grunters at the time, but the man is no roarer, nor, very possibly, is the horse; and, on the other hand, I have known more than one or two roarers who would not make the grunt alluded to, they mostly will, from having been so repeatedly struck that they shrink away from the expected blow; but it is not always the case.

It appears that Eques has been told by "a first-rate veterinary surgeon in one of the midland counties" that the noise (or grunting) "is caused by the animal groaning with pain suffered in his feet, which is always perceptible when the horse takes up at a fence, or descends into the next field." It would little become me to judge the attributes of any gentleman, still less so those of a professional one: I infer he was misunderstood. In the first place, the grunt alluded to and the groan of pain are as distinct as the neigh and the snort; secondly, if giving a grunt at a leap arose from pain in the feet, we must suppose that all grunters must have feet in a diseased state-I must say I never heard that this was the case; thirdly, I do not see why taking up his fore-feet, in order to put them over a fence, should cause more pain than taking them up in every stroke of his gallop, which we may infer he had done in going to his leap. That he might feel the concussion on alighting on them, is very likely; but, where horses do give a grunt in leaping, it will be found it arises from the exertion of taking the spring, not on taking up the feet or on alighting; and I think it will be found that the ears, the tail, and the feet have about as much to do with the cause of the grunt, the one as the other. I am quite satisfied that such is the private opinion of Eques, but some misunderstanding produced an explanation that excited his surprise. That a man with gouty feet would feel increased pain if forced to leap, is quite certain; the increased pressure on them necessary in the taking off would cause it. But there is no increased pressure on the fore-feet of the horse; he springs from his hind ones; lifting the fore-feet is easing them. If a man had gout in his hands, he certainly would find it no joke to be forced to play monkey, and go on all-fours; but, if he walked up stairs, I certainly should not expect to hear him grunt or groan at every step, because all exertion was thrown on his feet and not on his hands.

Eques is quite correct in stating that horses are never known to express any anguish they may feel in their feet from increased pain: this is easily accounted for; it requires a more than ordinary degree of pain to make a horse express it by any sound, whether going or standing still, and, in fact, in many cases, increased pace produces temporary comparative ease when the feet become warmed. Bring ever so pitiable a cripple from the stable, though putting each foot to the ground is agony, we hear no grunt or groan. Why we should, therefore, infer that the taking them up would cause an expression of pain, when no pain is caused by the act, I do not, I must say, quite see; independent of which, as I before stated, a sudden grunt is not the mode by which horses express pain.

I have much pleasure in quite agreeing with Eques in his estima

Y

tion of wind-suckers; I hate them even worse than crib-biters; I hold it to be the worse habit of the two. That good judges are of the same opinion, I need state no further proof than that Mr. Ferguson, the owner of that best of horses, Harkaway, told me he had a considerable part of the tongue of a valuable race-horse cut off to stop his wind-sucking. Whether it is an idle, bad habit only, or whether it proceeds from some morbid state of the stomach creating a craving until it is filled with something, I cannot say; but this I know, to a race-horse it is destruction. Crib-biters as race-horses there are many-old St. Lawrence is one of the most determined ones I ever knew; how he lives surprises me, for his neck-strap is put on so tight, he looks strangled; but he could, and indeed can, go; doubtless everything has been tried with him, but it appears that nothing but seven-eighths hanging stops him.

Eques's plan of the mouthing-bit to his wind-sucker has, first, the great merit of being a kind and merciful one, and, so far as I am concerned, it is a novel one. I rejoice that it succeeded. I shall certainly mention it to my friends. Whether it may succeed with all horses remains to be proved; whenever it does, the owner will be much indebted to the inventor of it; and if, which I dare say is the case, the invention of Eques is as fertile in curing the diseases of his horses as their bad habits, he may trust to his own good judgment in most cases. H. H.

OCTOBER'S OWN.

ENGRAVED BY J. SCOTT, FROM A PAINTING BY A. COOPER, R.A.

There is a jolly, jovial sound about this said October that should fall well on the ear of every man, and on none more gratefully than that of the sportsman. October! the Autumn certainly of some of our pastimes, but still the very Spring of others. The turfite, for one, is winding up his account with the debtor and creditor balance of the three brilliant October meetings; the royal yachtman for another, piloting the craft into port; and a leader in "the Lord's" for a third, getting about his last long hit. Thus for the past; while in perspective there's the cub-hunting, cover-hunting hullabaloo, that has been rousing us of late, every now and then, at five A.M., creeping on into real business. Those who have been "weak" enough to play the spoiled child with their nags, by indulging them in a summer's run, are physicking, and sweating, and singeing away to have them in something like form by this day three weeks; while others, who have been "wise enough to summer in the house, can stand at ease, and make ready, with the quiet content of old soldiers. Our friend with the long tails again has Young Hyson and Harebell in "active preparation "for the South Lancashire opening "Open ;" and our equally esteemed acquaintance of the trigger is wearing out the three pound odd of his certificate with Old Beppo and Juno. For him, in fact, the month is made to order; the birds a leetle wilder