The Sporting Dictionary and Rural Repository, Volume 2 (of 2) / Of General Information upon Every Subject Appertaining to the Sports of the Field

RULES
FOR MATCHING AND FIGHTING.

In MATCHING (with relation to the battles) it is an invariable rule, that, after the COCKS of the MAIN are weighed, the MATCH BILLS are compared, to see that they are equally correct.

In WEIGHING, it is to be observed, that every PAIR of COCKS of dead or equal weight falling together, are to be separated, and matched against others coming within the limited weight of each other; provided that it appears the main can be enlarged, by adding thereto, either one battle or more thereby.

In FIGHTING, it is to be mutually understood, that the MAIN BATTLES begin to be fought with the lightest pair of cocks, proceeding in succession with the next in weight upwards to the end; so that every lighter pair may fight earlier than those that are heavier.

In farther elucidation of this SPORT, See Cocking, Cock-Match, Cockpit Royal, and Game Cock.

Those horses having the greatest quantity of hair upon their legs are the most subject to this malady, where it remains a long time obscured from the eye of the MASTER; as it is not to be expected, a discovery will be made, and communicated, by a servant, in palpable proof of his own neglect and indolence. If the part inveterately affected is covered with hair, either totally or partially, it must be taken off as close as possible, before any attempt at cure is made; that done, a patient fomentation of hot gruel, a decoction of linseed, or mallow roots and leaves, should be persevered in for a quarter of an hour daily, letting, however, the process of soft soap and warm water be adopted on the first day, continuing one of the before-mentioned fomentations every day after. When the scabs or eschars are completely softened, got loose, and begin to exfoliate, the parts may be well impregnated with camphorated SPERMA CÆTI LINIMENT every day after the fomentation; but not before the part is made properly dry to receive it. If the subject is supposed to have an acrimonious tendency in the blood, or displays the least appearance of cutaneous eruption in any other part of the body, the best method will be to put him upon a course of ANTIMONIAL ALTERATIVES, which he will consume with his corn without farther trouble.

The MANEGE may be properly divided into the GREATER and the LESSER; or, in the precise words of a modern writer, "the grand and petit manege: the former, or management of the great horse, intended purely for the purposes of parade and shew; the latter, confined solely to the utile of military tactics. The grand manege consists in teaching a horse, already perfectly broke in the common way, certain artificial motions, the chief of which are called the terra a terra, demi-volt, corvet, capriole, croupade, balotade, and the step and the leap; which last is a motion compounded of three airs; namely, the terra a terra, corvet, and the leap, by which the motion is finished. When a horse is perfect in all these, he is styled a full dressed, or maneged horse.

"The petit manege is that drilling, or training, by which the army riding-masters fit the horse for military service in the ranks. The chief objects of it are, to set him upon his haunches, and make him rein well; to give him a cadenced pace; to teach him to rein back, or retreat; to move sideways, to stand fire, and to leap. After these, a horse will soon become capable of all the necessary military evolutions. The common business of our town riding-schools, is to teach grown gentlemen and ladies, and to set ill-broken horses upon their haunches. It is well known that the grand manege has been long out of fashion in this country; and farther, that it has for years past been upon the decline in every other. I look upon it as a relict of that superstition in all things, which is the characteristic of barbarous times. It is unnecessary to any good or useful purpose, because all such, whether of parade or business, may be fully answered by the common, rational, and uninjurious management; whereas there is always more or less cruelty practised in completing the full-dressed horse; such, for instance, as severe whippings, the meaning of which the horse cannot possibly comprehend, and which are therefore unnatural and illegitimate measures; the labour and irritation also are excessive; and, after all, the natural paces of the horse are spoiled, and he is rendered unfit for common business; the only compensation for which is, that he has learned sundry harlequin tricks; two of which are, to skip like a GOAT, and kick up behind like an ASS."

As the MANGE is principally a cutaneous disease, by which the skin only is materially affected, so the cure must chiefly depend upon external applications; prescriptions for which may be amply supplied from either old books, or new Veterinarians; neither of these being now difficult of attainment. If the disease has arisen from an impoverished state of living, and a consequent acrimonious state of the blood, altering its property, by a change of aliment, and more liberal invigoration of the system, will greatly tend to the promoting a speedy obliteration. Should a horse in high HEALTH, FLESH, and CONDITION, have received the disease by infection, BLEEDING, evacuants, or alteratives, should be brought into use in aid of external applications.

A variety of opinions are held, and occasionally propagated, upon the best and most proper age for putting a mare to horse: that a FILLY covered in her third year, will produce a fine healthy foal in her fourth, is sufficiently known; and that BROOD MARES bring forth excellent stock from their twentieth to their twenty-fifth year, is equally true; but if the two extremes are avoided (when it can be conveniently done so) the produce may most likely come some few shades nearer perfection. In the first instance it is fair to infer, that the component parts may not have reached the extreme points of STRENGTH and MATURITY; and that in the latter, from the natural effect of AGE, the frame is verging upon decay; and that the LACTEALS from whence the NUTRIMENT for the FOAL is to be obtained, must be contracted in proportion.

The best and most approved season for letting the mare take the horse, where the produce is bred for general purposes, is from the first week in May to the last in June; as then the offspring is dropt in April or May in the following year, and are the properest months a foal can fall in, to have the advantage of all the summer for growth and expansion, preparatory to the drawback of WEANING, and the ensuing severity of the winter. Mares during the time of GESTATION, are liable, but very little subject to ABORTION; reasonable work, and moderate exertions, affect them but slightly in that way; nor does the disappointment but seldom happen, unless by some severe, cruel, or inhuman treatment. Mares are the most uncertain of all animals in bringing forth from the time of conception. Numerous attempts have been made to discover the precise time of a mare's carrying her foal, which, however, does not yet appear to have been ascertained to a certainty. Long-standing opinions and authority, transmitted from one posterity to another, has established at eleven months and as many days as the mare happens to be years old: strict attention, in a variety of instances, to both the LUNAR and CALENDAR months, has proved the uncertainty of this calculation, and left them, in those events, dependent upon neither one or the other. Certain it is, they go many days longer with a COLT FOAL than they do with a FILLY; and cases frequently occur, where a mare carries her foal within a few days of the twelve months.

Notwithstanding the mildness and inactivity of QUICKSILVER in its crude and undivided state, yet, when resolved by FIRE into FUME, or otherwise divided into very minute particles, and prevented from re-uniting by the interposition of proper substances, or combined with mineral acids, it has very powerful effects, affording the most violent POISONS, and yielding the most excellent and salutary remedies, of any with which the medical world are acquainted. There are now (introduced upon the broad basis of experimental practice) a variety of mercurial preparations, some of which are given internally; others are introduced (or rather insinuated) into the habit by external application, either in a liquid solution, or in an unctuous form: in whatever way it be administered internally, or applied externally, it evidently possesses the power of solving all stagnant fluids, liquifying the viscid juices which obstruct the finer vessels, and most minute passages; and has been known, by patient perseverance, to obliterate cancerous affections, and schirrosities of dangerous magnitude. The fundamental effects of mercury (or rather mercurial preparations) do not depend upon the increase of the sensible evacuations; as its gradual introduction into the habit (or system) of either man, or beast, may be so managed, by judicious proportions, as to promote excretion through the different emunctories, without perceptibly deranging the frame of one or the other.

Thus much being introduced upon the properties of mercury and its preparations, as applicable to the convenience of those who may not have entered into medical disquisition, it becomes necessary to advert to its use, now become so evidently efficacious in many of the disquietudes and disorders to which horses (as well as ourselves) are so constantly liable. The only modes by which it can be with prudence and safety administered to a horse, is either in a course of PURGATIVES, in the form of CALOMEL incorporated with the cathartic ingredients, or introduced as an ALTERATIVE, by throwing daily very small quantities of that article into the system; or the better alternative (if meant as an alterative) of giving the ÆTHIOP'S MINERAL, in doses of two drachms each, every morning, mixed up with a cordial ball. Much DANGER, and many LOSSES, having recently occurred with individuals from a too free use of calomel in PURGING BALLS, where horses, from a certain degree of constitutional irritability, or a want of proper care and attention during their physic, have died in the most excruciating agonies, with only two or three drachms (unless erroneously weighed in the shops) of calomel; it certainly will be the most PRUDENT, evidently the most SAFE, to adopt the three gradational quantities of a drachm, a drachm and a half, or two drachms, according to the size, strength, and constitution, of the horse, taking care never to exceed that quantity even with the strongest.

The MULES bred in Spain, with a proper attention to their intentional use, whether for travelling or shew, are bred between very large he-asses and Spanish mares; these are exceedingly tall, stately, and their colour inclining to black. A still larger kind are, however, produced by these asses out of Flanders mares, some of which have been known to reach seventeen hands high, and of equal apparent strength to our common carriage horses; but they are much stronger than horses of their own size, will bear infinitely greater hardships, and are kept at a much less expence; as well as an additional recommendation, that they are not so subject to diseases, which is a material consideration to the justification of their more general use. They are found equally fit for the saddle, as for the more laborious employments of draft and agriculture; they are remarkably docile, are easily broke, and walk or trot with ease to themselves and to the rider.

It has been already remarked, under the head Mare, that foals more frequently take after the DAM than the SIRE, and this is perceptibly striking in MULES; for those bred between an ASS and a MARE, invariably partake more of the nature of the latter than the former; being in general of good formation, lively, swift, and tractable; inheriting only the good qualities of the ass, as his strength, patience, and perseverance, under fatigue; while, on the other hand, those bred betwixt a horse and a she-ass, are more of the nature of the latter, dull, heavy, sluggish, ill-formed, and small in size. What few mules are produced in this kingdom, at least the major part, may be probably bred more from chance than design, by the common intermixture and unrestrained association of asses with mares, upon the large wastes and commons in various parts of the country, where they are frequently seen in the act of propagation. Of mules, it is to be observed, that, although such intermediate animal is produced between the two which generate the third, there the prolific property ceases, and propagation goes no farther. Thus it is with a part of the feathered creation; it is known by those who breed, that a cock goldfinch, or a linnet, will pair with a hen canary, and produce young; but in that offspring the power of procreation entirely ceases, and they are therefore termed MULES.