  EARS.—As the ears constitute much of the beauty of a horse, according as they are well or ill shaped, so from their situation, they are sure to become early objects of observation. If they are small, soft, and fine, curving inward in a small degree at the point, perfectly erect, and spirited in action, they give the animal a very noble, majestic, and commanding aspect: on the contrary, when a horse points his ears forwards, he bears the appearance of looking eternally for mischief, and always preparing to start at every object he meets, which is no very pleasant sensation to the rider. Horses of this description are seldom remarkable for the safety of their eyes; a purchaser cannot be too circumspect Pain in the ear of a horse is discoverable immediately by its flaccidity, and painful deprivation of erection. The ear lays nearly flat either one way or another; the horse is almost every minute giving violent shakes of his head, which he as constantly leaves hanging down on the side affected; from which circumstances alone the seat of pain may with certainty be ascertained. Pains in the ear may arise from various causes, as colds, blows, the insinuation of, or sting from, forest flies, bees, wasps, or hornets. If the first is known to be the cause, the stimulus excited by mildly rubbing the inside with the half of a newly divided onion, will soon relieve the pain. If from a blow, rubbing the ear inside and out with two table-spoons full of camphorated spirits, mixed with two tea-spoons full of extract of saturn, will relieve. If from a sting, a plentiful impregnation of fine olive oil, to give the Trimming the EARS on the inside is a very common practice, and adds considerably to the neatness and cleanliness of the head and appearance; but care should be taken never to let it be done during rainy weather, sharp and severe winds, or in the winter season; dreadful colds, as well as dangerous diseases, have often been produced by these means, without knowing from what cause the ill effect has been derived. The operation of trimming should be performed in warm, open, mild weather, and with SCISSARS in preference to the flame of a candle; which, with the additional use of the twitch, only serves to put the poor animal to a double degree of unnecessary misery. After the ears are trimmed, they may be rubbed over the inside with a small quantity of fresh butter, or a piece of fine linen impregnated with olive oil, both of which are excellent preventives to cold after the operation. ECLIPSE—the name of the most famous horse (since Flying Childers) ever produced or trained in this or any other country. He was bred in Windsor Great Park by the Culloden (or Great) Duke of In 1770 he received forfeit 600 guineas, and won the King's 100 guineas at Newmarket; the King's 100 guineas at Guildford; the same at Nottingham; the same and 319 at York; the King's 100 guineas at Lincoln; 150 guineas, and the King's 100 guineas again at Newmarket, where orders having been privately given by his owner, "to go off at score, and run the whole four miles for speed," he double distanced his opponents, and was then taken out of training for want of a competitor. From this time he continued as a stallion at Epsom, in Surry, and afterwards at Cannons, the seat of Colonel O'Kelly, in Middlesex, where he died He was sire of Firetail, Soldier, Corporal, Serjeant, Don Quixote, King Fergus, Nina, Charlemont, Competitor, Gunpowder, Hidalgo, King Hermon, Meteor, Pegasus, Scota, Serpent, Squeak, Stripling, Devi Sing, Eliza, Poor Soldier, Big Ben, Spitfire, Fair Barbara, Adonis, Mercury, Lily of the Valley, Volunteer, Bonnyface, Jupiter, Venus, Antiochus, Dungannon, Maria, Henley, Soujah ul Dowlah, Grimalkin, Dian, Thunderbolt, Lightning, Spinner, Horizon, Miss Hervey, Plutus, Pluto, and Comet; exclusive of a great number of winners, for the list and particulars of which, reference may be made to Weatherby's "Stud Book," and "Racing Calendar." EARTH.—A fox beating his pursuers when hunted, and taking refuge under ground, is then said to have earthed, or gone to earth. Some of these earths are situate in old chalk pits, forming such different channels and ramifications amidst the roots of trees in woods and coppices, that it is impossible to dig them out; but where there is the least probability of success, it is never relinquished; upon the established and well-founded principle, that the EARTH-STOPPER—is an indispensible part of a FOX-HUNTING establishment, whose business is principally performed by night. His department is to visit and stop the strongest earths in the district intended to be hunted on the following day. This is usually effected between the hours of ten at night and four in the morning, by means of bushes, brambles, earth, &c. to furnish which, he is provided with a hand-bill, spade, candle and lanthorn, a hardy rough poney, terriers, and of course a pocket pistol, to recruit the spirits amidst the dreary scenes it is become his occupation to explore. It is also his business to re-open the EARTHS after the sport of the day, that the FOXES may not fall victims to other modes of destruction. ELDER—is a tree common in most hedges in the country, bearing a fruit called ELDER-BERRIES, from which people make a very good wine. It is, however, only mentioned here to remind the reader, that the flowers are a very excellent ingredient in fomentations, and sporting gentlemen should never be without them: they should be gathered in ELECAMPANE,—a root formerly in much estimation for its efficacy in coughs and disorders of the breast and lungs; hence the reputation it has attained in pectoral compositions for the use of horses. The great difficulty, however, of procuring any thing like the genuine root in powder from the medical retail shops, must ever prevent any great gratification of expectation, to those who rely too much upon the properties it is said to retain. EMBROCATION;—a name given to SPIRITUOUS, VOLATILE, or SATURNINE applications in a liquid form; either as corroborants, stimulants, repellents, &c. and in most cases they are doubly efficacious, if their use is preceded by sponges dipt in a hot decoction, prepared from those garden aromatics called "FOMENTATION HERBS." EMOLLIENTS—are such external applications as mollify the surface, and alleviate any stricture upon the surrounding parts: they supple the solids, as well as sheath and soften any asperity of the fluids. Fomentations are of this class, and prove of the greatest utility in all tumefactions, enlargements, and many lamenesses of HORSES, with those practitioners who have judgment and patience ENTRANCE of HORSES—is the ceremony of entering horses (at the particular places appointed) on a certain day previous to the races at any city, borough, or town, where the plates to be run for are given and advertised. Horses intended to run, are "to be SHEWN and ENTERED," paying two or three guineas "entrance money," (according to the custom of the place,) and in general five shillings to the CLERK of THE COURSE. For all plates given by His Majesty, or his R. H. the P. of Wales, no other entrance money is permitted, or paid, but the before-mentioned fee to the clerk of the course. ENTRANCE of HOUNDS—is the introduction of young hounds to the PACK; with whom, at a EPILEPSY,—a disorder in horses, bearing some similitude to APOPLEXY and STAGGERS; for which the same medical means are applied for relief. EQUERRY—is an appointment of much honour in the home department of His Majesty, under the sole direction of the MASTER of the HORSE. There are FIVE EQUERRIES in this official situation, one of whom is called the first: of the other four, two are always in waiting to attend upon His Majesty in every equestrian excursion, whether on the road, to the field, or in the chase, with whom His Majesty most graciously condescends to converse familiarly. His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, the Dukes of York, Gloucester, and other branches of the Royal Family, have likewise attendants of this description. EQUERRIES—apply equally to those in a more subordinate situation, who personally officiate in the STABLES of the Crown, and to whom is entrusted the breaking, managing, and preparing ESCAPE,—the name of a horse of great beauty, excellent symmetry, and much celebrity. He was bred by Mr. Franco, and got by Highflyer out of a Squirrel mare; he was foaled in 1785; and in the First Spring Meeting at Newmarket, 1789, he beat the Prince of Wales's Cantoo Baboo, from the ditch-in, for 200 guineas. He was then purchased by his Royal Highness, and in the Second Spring Meeting he received forfeit from Alexander, and Clown, 100 guineas each. In the First October Meeting of the same year, he beat Nimble across the flat 200 guineas. The Craven Meeting, 1790, he beat Grey Diomed over the Beacon 500 guineas; and won the great subscription purse at York, beating ActÆon, and Gustavus. The Craven Meeting, 1791, he beat Skylark, Highlander, Glaucus, Halkin, Meteor, and Buffer, a subscription of 50 guineas each: two to one on Skylark. First October Meeting the same year, he beat Grey Diomed over the Beacon Course 8st. 7lb. each for 1000 guineas. Two days after, he beat him again for the renewed 140 guineas. In the second October Meeting he won a subscription purse (twelve subscribers) over the Beacon, beating Chanticleer, Skylark, Grey Diomed, Harpator, and Alderman, with the odds four and five to one ESCHAR—is the prominence remaining upon the cicatrix of an ill-cured wound, or the scab frequently seen to form a projecting apex upon a broken knee; or where some injury has been left to cure itself by an effort of nature, without the least interposition of art. If it is a scab only, and not of long standing, it may in general be brought away spontaneously, by occasional softenings with small quantities of camphorated spermacÆti liniment; if, on the contrary, they are rigidly seated, and have acquired a degree of callosity in the nature of a sitfast, there is no other mode of cure, but by extirpation with the knife and forceps. ESTRAY, or Stray,—appertain equally to horse, mare, bull, ox, cow, sheep, or, in fact, any head of cattle, who having strayed from its own home, common, waste, or lair, into a strange MANOR, or LORDSHIP, and there found without an owner, is then called an ESTRAY, or stray: in which case it is an established custom, sanctioned by LAW, and founded in EQUITY, that such stray is proclaimed, and his or her marks described, by the common crier, in the three next nearest towns on the market-day; and if the stray is not claimed within a year and a day of the time on which it was publicly EUPHORBIUM,—an article whose acrid and stimulative property renders it only applicable to one medical purpose, and that externally; it constitutes a principal ingredient in the preparation of BLISTERING OINTMENT for HORSES, where its proportion, if managed properly, should be exactly equal with its corresponding article CANTHARIDES, commonly called Spanish flies. EVACUANTS—are such medicines as gently stimulate the intestines, and urinary passages, to a more speedy secretion and expulsion of their excrementitious contents. The term is applicable to both PURGATIVES and DIURETICS; the effect of which is to remove plethora in horses, and to prevent the consequent viscidity of blood; which, when a horse is overloaded in his frame, and the solids too grossly distended, soon displays itself in swelled legs, cracked heels, cutaneous scurfy eruptions, grease, farcy, or some one of the many ills frequently produced by an accumulation of HUMOURS EVACUATION—is that part of the ANIMAL ŒCONOMY, without a regular preservation of which, the frame of man or beast cannot long continue free from PAIN or DISEASE. Next to the aliment necessarily received for the support of life, EVACUATION is the very effort of Nature upon which HEALTH must principally depend. Little penetration is requisite to comprehend most perfectly a system so plain as to require but very concise explanation. Consistency should be observed, and attention should be paid, to what the frame receives by FOOD, and what it discharges by the different evacuations; for if the body (within any given time) accumulates much more by unreasonable and unnecessary supplies, than the EFFORTS of Nature can carry off by her different emunctories in the evacuation of excrements, the foundation of disease follows of course. The fluids become thick and stagnant, the circulation languid, the solids preternaturally distended, and their elasticity partially destroyed; hence arises that infinite number of distorted VALETUDINARIANS with which By adverting to these considerations, it will immediately appear, that even a temporary suppression of the natural evacuations must, in the first instance, inevitably prove the basis of pain or disquietude, and lastly of DISEASE. In the human body, great attention should be paid to diurnal evacuation, if a wish to preserve health is at all entertained. Infinite are the miseries originally brought on, and for years continued, (to a lingering death,) by an inconsiderate neglect or indolence in respect to the due proportion to be observed between repletion and evacuation. This attention is not more necessary in the human frame, than it is with the HORSES of those who indulge the least desire to have their studs in high health and perfect condition. When a horse is observed to get above himself, or, in other words, to become loaded with flesh, too full in the carcase, round in the legs, thick in the wind, dull in the stable, and heavy in action, EVACUATION cannot be too soon promoted as a preventive to impending disease. EXCRESCENCE.—Any preternatural enlargement is so called; but it is principally, and most properly, applied to those of a spongy nature, as WARTS and WENS, as well as a polypus upon any particular part. In all wounds of HORSES, if they are of considerable magnitude, fungous flesh increases very rapidly, and frequently disconcerts the young or injudicious VETERINARIAN; who, erroneously adopting caustics and escharotics, too often renders the remedy more destructive than the disease. Fungous formation of this kind passes also under the technical denomination of EXCRESCENCE, and is best reduced by superficial scarification in lines transverse and longitudinal; the dressings then consisting of strong red precipitate digestive ointment with lint, &c. Excrescences of the warty kind will always submit to repeated and persevering applications of BUTTER OF ANTIMONY, OIL OF VITRIOL, or any other escharotic, but they are not to be laid on with too liberal a hand. Wenny deep-seated substances (erroneously called excrescences) require very warm stimulants, and powerful spirituous applications, for a great length of time, before any expectation of repulsion or obliteration can be entertained. EXERCISE.—The great advantages resulting from EXERCISE, to both man and beast, are now so universally understood, both in theory and practice, that animadversion here must be considered EXPEDIATE—is a term transmitted from one book to another by former writers, but is at present little used in either THEORY or PRACTICE. It implies the cutting out the centrical ball of the foot of a dog, or such claws as shall totally prevent his pursuit of game. In earlier times, when the FOREST LAWS were more rigidly enforced, the owner of any dog not expediated, living within the district, was liable to a fine for non-obedience. EXTRAVASATION—applies only to such fluids as may, from any accidental cause, or injury sustained, escape from the tubes or vessels in which they were confined; when they from such extravasation become stagnant, laying the foundation of an obstruction terminating in an enlargement, probably disagreeable to the eye, and some impediment to action. Extravasated lymph, oozing from ruptured fibres, lay most invariably the foundation of almost every tumefaction to which we can advert; and evidently demonstrates the necessity for reflection before we proceed to blows, when it is recollected what serious and lasting injuries by blows may be sustained. .—The state of the EYES in every horse constitutes so much of the value and excellence in respect to their good or bad formation, that proper, nay extreme, circumspection ought to be used in the examination previous to purchase. The best and most experienced judges of horses are sometimes seriously disappointed, and not unfrequently deceived, in a superficial survey, and too hasty decision: in fact, there is no point of the ANIMAL upon the merits of which (in a variety of instances) it is so difficult to form an accurate, at least an infallible, opinion as upon the parts before us. If at first sight you are attracted by their bright, bold, prominent appearance, and observe they are sufficiently clear and transparent to reflect your own figure in the eye as you stand before it, and the horse neither winks, blinks, or rolls the orbs of the eyes about, as if feeling for the light when brought out of the stable, there is then every well-founded reason to believe they are not only safe, but PERFECTLY GOOD. On the contrary, when the EYE appears flat, as if sunk in its orbit, with a palpable vacuum round the orb, between it and the eye-lid, it is a very unfavourable indication; particularly if there should be no defluxion (or inflammatory discharge) from the eye, to justify the idea of a temporary injury having been sustained by a BLOW, BITE, or some such accident, neither to be foreseen or guarded against. If there is a palpable indentation above the orbs, and a wrinkled contraction of A small pig-eye should be likewise carefully avoided, as they are seldom to be depended upon; the subject is frequently addicted to starting, and the future state of the eye in general doubtful. A cloudy muddiness within the outer humour of the eye, (giving it an opaque appearance,) or a milky thickening of the surface, denote present defect, and great probability of approaching blindness. It becomes, therefore, in all cases of doubt, a matter of self-preservation, to have in memory this admonition, that it will be more advantageous (evidently more prudent) to reject an object of impurity and partial attraction, than to purchase in haste, and "repent at leisure." |
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