which, as I have said, is one of the principal causes of foot lameness. Its unhealthy state is that of being morbidly thick, hard, and inflexible, either too concave, or in the extreme of convexity, as in pumiced feet.

An idea is prevalent that contraction is the principal cause of lameness; but this is a mistake: for where there is one horse lame from contraction, there are twenty

lame from concussion. The free descent and elasticity of the horny sole will also contribute to prevent this disease, concussion; but prevention mainly depends on allowing the newly-discovered and important functions of the posterior parts of the foot to be performed. By the posterior parts of the foot are here meant all those posterior to the heels of the coffin bone-viz., the quarters of the crust, bars, heels of the frog, and lateral cartilages. All these, in an unshod foot, from their attachment to the horny sole, have a considerable motion downwards : and to allow of which, when shod, the shoe should always be laid off the heels and quarters; that is, there should be a space left between the crust and the shoe sufficient for the introduction of a picker. The shoe so laid off will then, in fact, act like a tip (which is the nearest to perfection of all shoes, so far as the functions of the foot are concerned); with this additional advantage, that the heels of the foot will be prevented from wearing away so fast as with tips. This, then, is the other grand cause of lameness-concussion to the sensible parts of the foot; produced from the natural descent of these posterior springs being prevented, by their resting in close contact with the shoe in ordinary shoeing; and hence it is that there are so many lame horses, notwithstanding they

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have good open circular feet. has been thought that contraction is produced by the nails; but it appears that the tendency of these will be, at worst, only to keep the hoof of the same size and shape as the shoe to which it is fixed.

The causes of contraction, then, are:-First, a morbidly thick sole, which will not descend and expand the heels and quarters. Secondly, the frog being pared away, consequently elevated from the ground, and not allowed to come in contact with it, as it ought to do, at each step of the animal. Thirdly, heat, by which the crust is contracted, and rendered hard and brittle. Hence so many horses turned out to grass in summer come up lame.

The causes of concussion are, that the posterior springs of the foot are deprived of their natural functions of descent by their close approximation with the shoe, and also by the want of elasticity in the horny sole.

To counteract the effects of heat in the stable, the horse should stand upon wet straw, strewed under his fore feet two or three nights in a week. This will render his crusts elastic and tough; and the less a horse, with a predisposition to have contracted feet, lies down the better; as, when he lies down, all pressure is removed from his frogs, which are the grand active powers to keep open the upper part of the crust next the coronet, and resist the contractile effect of heat.

THE EPPING HUNT.

April 7th (Easter Monday) was the day on which, according to annual custom and immemorial usage, the great London Hunt took place on Epping Forest : and most unquestionably nothing

could be like it-or, as the poet says

"Nothing but itself could be its parallel."

The day opened rather inauspiciously for hunting, insomuch that the landlords on the Forestold Tom Rounding, and he of the Baldfaced Stag, especially-began to look rather lackadaisically at their larders, in a well-grounded fear that no cockneys would come to consume the many fair rounds of beef and portly hams, cooked purposely for cockney consumption. But at one o'clock the rain blew off, the sun broke out, and the oockneys came flocking down the road by hundreds-nay, by thousands; and old Tom Rounding's rounds of beef were speedily converted into cockney chyle. Old Tom, be it remembered, is the Master of the Hunt; for though the renowned William Tilney Long Pole Wellesley has the credit of the thing, yet old Tom rules the roast and the boiled too; and many a gallon of Old Tom does he get rid of, at a pretty considerable profit, in consequence thereof. Consequently "the Hunt" did not begin till two o'clock in the afternoon; for old Tom is decidedly of opinion that it is bad to hunt upon an empty stomach. "Hunting," quoth he, "is sport-sport is a joke, and there is no joking with an empty stomach.”

At two o'clock in the afternoon, then, the hunt began; at which time there was as pretty a field of sportsmen assembled at the top of Fair Mead Bottom as a body would wish to see on an Easter Monday. None of your Melton Mowbray concerns-four-andtwenty scarlet coats all in a row; but two or three thousand regularbred cockneys; some on horseback, some on assback, some in drags, some in rattlers, some in

Captain Abbott's cubs, and some in nothing at all, and all mixed higgledy-piggledy together, so that no man amongst them could say, "Here am I," with any chance of being owned by anybody else. Indeed, we heard one gentleman call out, "Where the d-l are you, Jack? To which Jack replied, "Cuss me if I know; and no doubt there were a vast many others in the same predicament. At two o'clock, as aforesaid, a fallow deer (of the softer sex) was brought from old Tom Rounding's stable in a cart, after having been shown at threepence a peep, as long as anybody could be found to pay threepence for peeping at it. There was at least nine couple of hounds brought with it; somehow or other, they got lost among the carts, cabs, and coaches. A ring was formed round the cart, and the lady deer was pushed out of it, vi et armis, into the middle of the ring. And such a shout was set up at the sight of her, as might well have quailed the heart of the proudest in the Forest.

The sportsmen soon rallied, and beset her to such a degree that she did not know which way to run; but went wandering in and out among the coaches and things seemingly quite bewildered, until a very valiant cockney, on a horse at least eleven hands high, gave her such a cut across the nose, with his hunting-whip, as sent her off right an end into a fold-yard hard by, and there they crowded upon her so fast, that in the scuffle they succeeded in breaking her leg. Of course she was put completely hors de combat, as the French say, and no doubt she was speedily converted into venison, for they took her away in the cart more dead than alive.

It was now after three o'clock, and as the sportsmen had not had sport enough, the managers gave

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notice that they would bring them another deer. Accordingly they went back to old Tom Rounding's, and about four o'clock they brought down another-a more sprightly one than the first and one that seemed to have been "trained up in the way he should go;" for he was no sooner out of the cart than away he went with a bit of a circumbendibus towards old Tom Rounding's stable again. Everybody-except the hounds-followed him at the top of their speed; but he would have got safe into the stable nevertheless, if some two or three hundred of them had not faced him, by a short cut; which he perceiving, he very unfairly ran up to his knees in a horse-pond. Though some two or three of the foremost tumbled in after him, he did not take the least notice of them. A consultation was then held as to what should be done with him; and at last, by general agreement, it was settled that he should have another start. So the managers got him out of the horse-pond at last, and he ran about in the wood a good deal, until everybody was very hot, and then he was lost. However, just then a nice cooling shower came on very providentially to cool the heat into which everybody had got himself, and so they all, as usual on this occasion, betook themselves their heels-or the heels of their horses and asses-with all convenient speed.

to

EXTRAORDINARY FEAT.-A horse, the property of Captain O'Hanlon, whilst galloping the other day, in the vicinity of Cheltenham, covered, in a single bound, the enormous distance of thirtyfive feet and a half.-Observer, March 24.

COMPARATIVE QUALITIES OF GUNPOWDER. Gunpowder, to be good, should be quick, strong, free from impurity, and not liable to attract moisture from the atmosphere. The general method of trying the purity of gunpowder, is by burning it on clean white paper: two or three small heaps are made near each other, and one of them is fired; if the smoke rises perpendicularly, and there be no feculent matter left on the paper, nor the other heaps fired, it is considered an evidence that the ingredients have been of a good quality, and well compounded. If, however, the other heaps are fired, the paper burnt, or a dirty residuum left, it may be supposed that the nitre was impure, that the charcoal was completely pulverized, or the

whole of them were not well incorporated together. It is remarkable that powder will vary in its proof at different times of the day, and from what cause we know not; in truth, notwithstanding it has been in use for four hundred years, we are still but partially acquainted with the nature and properties of this article. Several methods of proving or trying the strength of gunpowder have been adopted; but, with the exception, perhaps, of Mr. Dupont's eprouvette, none of them can be relied on for much accuracy, when used for fine powder. The mortar is very uncertain, and the spring eprouvette is worse than useless, and should be abolished. There is certainly no nation in the world where manufactures in general have so justly become celebrated as Great Britain, and in no article, perhaps, more than in gunpowder. The French powder has been highly spoken of; but, by experiments upon what is called "king's powder," made expressly for the King of France and his

court, and which is doubtless the best made in France, it will not be found to bear comparison with that of Pigou, Andrews, and Wilkes, of Dartford, Kent, which is no doubt the best foreign powder ever introduced into this country. Dupont's eprouvette is nothing more than a small chamber, capable of containing about the charge for a patent breech fowling-piece, placed in a vertical position, so that the action of the powder is upwards; when loaded, a weight of about four pounds, attached to a lever, is let down, so as to cover the chamber; to the movable end of the lever a graduated ribbon is so attached, that, when explosion takes place, the weight is thrown up, taking with it the ribbon, which passes through a small hole; the weight, of course, again falls to its place, but the ribbon is held by the slide at the point to which the force of the powder carried the weight. When the strength of gunpowder has been tested, its quickness in firing may also be proved, in a manner invented by Mr. A. Dupont. The method of thus testing quickness is both simple and satisfactory. It is nothing more than burning a train of twelve feet each of the samples to be tried: these trains are laid parallel to each other; and the board they are laid upon being graduated, you can thus plainly see the comparative quickness of each sample. American Shooter's Manual.

LION HUNTING.-The lion, which in many points of his character resembles the dog, differs from him in this, that his hearing is not so acute, and he is not, for that reason, easily awaked. When a lion is asleep, particularly after he has gorged himself with his prey, you may walk round about him without disturbing him; and

he has this property, that, if he is awaked by anything striking or falling upon him, he loses all presence of mind, and instantly flies off, if he is not confined, in the direction he happens to be lying at the time. The wolf and the tiger generally retire to the ca

verns and the ravines of the mountains; but the lion is most usually found in the open plain, and in the neighbourhood of the flocks. of antelopes, which invariably seek the open country, and which manifest a kind of instinctive aversion to places in which their powerful adversary may spring upon them suddenly and unexpectedly. It has been remarked of the lion by the Bushmen, that he generally kills and devours his prey in the morning at sunrise, or at sunset. On this account, when they intend to kill lions, they generally notice where the springbucks are grazing at the rising of the sun; and by observing, at the same time, if they appear frightened and run off, they conclude that they have been attacked by the lion. Marking accurately the spot where the alarm took place, about eleven o'clock in the day, when the sun is powerful, and the enemy they seek is supposed to be fast asleep, they carefully examine the ground, and, finding him in a state of unguarded security, they lodge a poisoned arrow in his breast. The moment the lion is thus struck he springs from his lair, and bounds off as helpless as the stricken deer. The work is done; the arrow of death has pierced his heart, without even breaking the slumbers of the lioness which may have been lying beside him; and the bushman knows where, in the course of a few hours, or even less time, he will find him dead, or in the agonies of death.Philip's Researches in South Africa.

A short time back it was stated, in Bell's Life, that you would fight me for £250 a side, if I were successful with Brown, and on the next Sunday I answered it, stating that I would fight you, win or lose with Brown. At the time, I meant fighting, and nothing else. You, for what reason I don't know, stated to the company at the Woodman, when the last money was made good, that I had used you ill, and that you was sure I dare not fight you, and that my motive for challenging you was to get a good benefit. It is most true that you have won most of your battles, but whom have you fought? The best man you ever fought was Oliver, and his day was gone by-he was a stale man. You state in your bills, when on a sparring tour, that you are the Champion of England, and yet you dare not fight Ward, but challenge me. I have advised with my friends, and they say that they will back me against any man in England, for Five Hundred, and against you in preference to any other, for they think that you are an old woman, which is my opinion also.

In last Sunday's paper you state that I acted "like a coward," and my seconds "like bull-dogs.' In the first place, you acted foul, and for an excuse said you was pushed by the crowd, and that you did not do it intentionally. I should have thought it was so had you not repeated it; and had my seconds done what they ought to have done, they would have hit you down with the bottle. But they explained afterwards, that the fight was so safe that they did

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not want to bring it to a wrangle, which they were sure you did. I have only to say, when I am placed in the world as you are (I mean cleaned out), I will fight again, and you shall have the first chance but not till then do I mean to enter the Ring.

Allow me to remind you that Ward is in want of a customer, and, I have no doubt, would be proud to make a match with you as soon as you think proper.

To conclude, I have only to add, whether I am a second or not, if I ever see you acting in or about a ring as you did when I fought Brown, I shall act as I did on that occasion-that is, to chastise you for it severely. Hoping the past will be a warning to you to do what is right in future, I remain, yours, PHILIP SAMPSON.

To Mr. Spring.

FUNERAL OF RANDALL.-Yesterday being appointed for the interment of the remains of the above celebrated pugilist, great crowds of persons assembled round the front of the Hole in the Wall public-house, Chancery Lane, which was kept by the deceased up to the period of his dissolution on the night of yesterday se'nnight.

The interest excited was attributable to a desire on the part of the multitude to obtain a view of the most noted prizefighters, and other celebrated characters connected with the sporting world, who, it was anticipated, would follow the departed "Nonpareil" to his grave. In this, however, they were disappointed, as not one of those connected with the prize ring attended as mourners; Jack Scroggins was the only man of notoriety who attended. The pro

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