Bibliothèque mondiale du cheval

« That wich we may denominate success in the proper maintenance of our working horses is derived from careful management. This applies with equal force to all our domestic animals.
To preserve their health and vigour through-out long years of usefulness, a knowledge of their habits, capabilities and peculiarities, &c., is required. He who possesses this is well armed, but he would be more perfect in having the ability and disposition to apply it directly towards the mitigation of evil consequences which, alas, swell up the mortality lists to a fearful degree. It should, in all cases, be the end and object of the attention bestowed upon them.
Great misconception prevails upon this point. Disease and death continually occur among our valuable animals, and owners have almost accepted the results as inevitable, from which there is no escape. "The steed is stolen", and fruitless attempts are made to rectify mistakes by the application of remedies which may not only prove useless, but even very aggravating.
An old axiom has advised "Every man to his trade’’ It should be inscribed in legible characters upon the walls of every building in which our domestic animals are kept. Prevention of disease and mortality frequently consists in a respectful observance of the hint and dangerous consequences are thereby commonly arrested or mitigated. Since the issue of a small work uniform with the present volume, designed to draw especial attention to the benefit and essentials of good management in one department only among horses, it is gratifying to learn that the object of the writer has not been overlooked by the numerous readers. While the question is one purely of scientific interest, and recognised as such; the desire has become intensified that further information should at once be placed in the hands of those who carry out the practical details. For this purpose the present treatise has been asked for. Proprietors wish to have reduced to plain language the formulce of scientific deduction, that "he who runs may read’ and thus extend a principle which is being daily more and more acknowledged as pre-eminently useful and beneficial.
We, however, incur great risk in becoming dogmatical. It is more easy and pleasurable to establish opinions on the foundation fortified by repeated accessions of scientific memoranda illustrating cause and eftect; but we cannot wait to follow the intricacies of the path, results only must be described, and the mechanism by which they are arrived at carefully shrouded from the view.
Whether such a conclusion is justifiable, the keen sense of the public will rapidly demonstrate. The useful being constantly aimed at by the author, he can only hope his efforts may be accepted as heretofore by his numerous readers and the press generally, whose comments have been of the most flattering character. (Leighton Buzzard, September 14 th 1868. » Présentation de l’éditeur (1869)