ar,
or, in fact, any year since 1869, but the average was better than since
1879. In 1880 the average for 1,738 head was $225, while in 1881 and
1882 the average further declined to $175. In 1883 the average was close
upon $230, but, upon the other hand, the number of animals sold fell to
1,400. The highest price paid was 1,505 guineas, for a four-year-old cow
of the fashionable Duchess blood, which was purchased by the earl of
Bective at the sale of Mr. Holford's herd in Dorsetshire. The
Australians purchased largely at the Duke of Devonshire's annual sale in
1878, and this year American and Canadian buyers bid briskly for animals
of the Oxford blood. These were the only two sales at which the average
reached three figures, the next best being that of a selection from Mr.
Green's herd in Essex, when forty-one lots averaged $360 each, or less
than half secured by the Duke of Devonshire's Short-horns.

DOCKING HORSES.

An English veterinary society has lately been discussing the question of
docking the tails of horses. The President looked upon docking as an act
of cruelty. By docking, the number of accidents from the horse holding
the rein under the tail was greatly increased, for the horse has less
power of free motion over the tail. If a short dock is put over the
rein, the animal has so little control of the tail that he can not
readily liberate the rein. The "stump" is sensitive, the same as the
remaining part of an amputated finger. In the majority of cases he
considered docking entirely unnecessary.

On the contrary, Doctor Axe (rather a suggestive name for an advocate of
docking) thought the practice improved the looks of a horse, thus
rendering it more salable. His sentimentality did not allow him to argue
this question of increased value. He did not think docking increased
accidents. Statistics, not assertions, were needed to establish facts of
this kind. As to the remark of the President, that the shortened tail
could not be so easily freed from the rein, he said it would depend on
who was driving; an expert would more quickly disengage the rein from a
docked tail. It may be true, he said, that there was more flexibility in
an uncut tail because its more flexible portion had not been removed;
but the docked tail had not the same power of covering and fixing down
the rein that the long tail possessed. The long retention of a certain
degree of sensibility after amputation was a known fact, but neither