The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1872-11-07
VOLUME 43.

nerves Of the neck, causing pain to tie ami
NAL, and, further, it would predispose the
unfortunate victim of fashion to such dis
eases as megrims, apoplexy, coma, inflam-
nation, and SOftening of the BRAIN
Hon. Chas. L. Flint, Secretary of the
Mass. Board of Agriculture, in an address
delivered at Boston Music Hall, March 1869
says:
"There is another point on which
should like to make a single remark. | al
lnde to the prevailing use OF the check rein
upon our draft and team horses. If a man
has hard days work to do, if he wants to
exert his muscles and sinews, he must have
those muscles free and unconlined; nobody
who has tried il can deny that, and how
does it happen that principle that every
farmer. every mechanic, every laboring
man OF any character would admit in his
own case, is so constantly disregarded iii
the case of the hard working and often
il-uscd horse And yet you see it every
day.
| have MANY times seen team overload
ed with coal tugging up yonder Beacon
Hin, straining every nerve, often piled with
the lash and sometimes with the toe OF q
cowhide boot while the power of the too
willing horses was crippled by 4 useless
and senseless check rein. Some OF you
may have read little work called Bubbles
by an Old Man. by Sir Francis Head, a
distinguished soldier who had galloped
across the pampas of South America, and
seen those vast drOves of untamed horses
in their native wildness and freedom, and
so was a good judge of the natural condi-
tionS under which the horse eXerts his
strength to the greatest advantage. In
that little work he contrasts the practices Of
different nations in regard to the check
rein and points out clearly that when a
horse has real work to do, whether slow
work as IN pows and carts, or quick as III
9aloping, or in the headlong flight across
the plain, nature tells him not to throw his
head up and backward towards his tail, but
forward and down so as TO give the force
OF his weight into what he is called upon
to do. He shows that nature never intend
ed a large and heavy animal like draft
horse to perform his slow work only. or
chiefly. by the strain of the muscle; but on
the other hand, by the power of weight rs
the rule, assisted by the strength of the
muscle as the exception when extra ress
tence is to be overcome.
And what is the use of a check rein OH a
draft or Il team horse, anyhow There
may be Il necessity for it in some young,
unbroken or illtempered animals but these
are the exceptions. On most or our heaNy
team horses it can rarely be Justified. II it
be said to prevent them from falling, it
may be said in reply, that it has quite as
often prevented an old horse from recover
ing from stumble. 1t is to be hoped that
horse owners will look at this matter in its
true light"
The foregoing are only Il few of many Eu
ropean and American authorities, which
have found to the same effect, and have
searched the books in vain for line to the
contrary.
| can only conclude, as my examinations,
that the custom of tying up horses heads
with check reins, like the custom Of bleed
ing calves before they are killed, is d relic oi
barbarism, contrary alike to common sense
and scientific opinion, and which has been
nobody's business to call public attention TO
it. GEO. L. ANGELL,
Pres. of the Mars. Society for the Preven
tion of Cruelty to Animals.