In this country the horse's tail is regarded as a useless or troublesome appendage. It was given to ward off the attacks of blood-sucking flies. But men choose to remove it without being able to give the horse any other protection from the insects against which it was intended to operate. They say that the long tail conceals the horse's quarters, diminishes his apparent height, heats him at fast work, and soils his rider. It is also supposed that amputation of the tail renders the back stronger. These sage sayings have been promulgated so extensively from one to another, that it seems to be universally decided that all horses must be docked.

These, it will be observed, are very strong objections to a long tail. It is a terrible thing to hide the quarters, and to make the horse look lower by an inch than he really is. Evils of such a nature are not to be suffered. The tail may be very useful in some respects, and in the good old times it was permitted to flourish as it grew, being only bound up when it troubled the horse's rider. But in times like these, when men clamor for freedom, and practise tyranny, it must be cut off.

It is said that the back becomes stronger after the tail is docked; that the back receives the blood which formerly went to the tail. There is no truth in this. The small quantity of blood which is saved can be furnished by one or two ad- » ditional ounces of grain, and there is not the slightest proof that the back becomes stronger.

Some writers have contended that the tail of the horse, like that of the greyhound or the kangaroo, assists him in turning, in the same way that a helm guides a ship. If this be so, as its action when the horse is running would seem to indicate, cavalry horses and racers, more than others, must lose a great deal of power by docking But whether this be true or not, there can be no doubt about the utility of the tail in keeping off flies, which to some horses give extreme torment. I have heard or read of a troop of cavalry employed, I think in some, part of India, that was quite useless in consequence of the annoyance the docked horses received from a large species of fly. In this country, for two months of the year, thin-skinned horses suffer excessively, and many accidents happen from their struggles or their fears. At grass they are in a constant fever.

It is surely worth while inquiring, whether all that is gained by docking balances the loss. In comparing the two it ought to be remembered that lockjaw and death are not rare results of the operation.

Docking is usually performed by the veterinarian, or the shoeing-smith, who keeps instruments for the purpose. In some places it is performed when the colt is only two or three months old. At such an early age, a knife will remove the tail, and the bleeding stops of itself. By docking early there is less risk, and the hair grows more strongly upon the remaining part of the tail than when the operation is delayed to a later period.