Part 98

It is necessary here to make some remarks on the absurd and mischievous practice of trimming horses’ legs; that is, cutting off parts which were designed by the Almighty for a useful purpose, that of defending the pastern; whereby they expose an important part to injuries. The fetlock, as it is termed, is found in all horses, especially in those of the northern breed, and from its position is an admirable guard against thorns, furze, flints, or other bodies, to which the pastern, without it, is so much exposed. The only excuse for this foolish practice is, that it is customary, and makes a horse look clean about the legs; and this notion is carefully preserved, and impressed upon the minds of those inexperienced in horses, by the men employed to operate on the occasion. To such an extent is this absurd practice carried, that in Exeter it has become a distinct profession, for there is one man I know who appears to make it his sole employment. The hairs covering the back part of the legs, and fetlock joint, are always indicative of the horse’s breed. In those of northern climates it is strong, abundant, and an excellent protection against accidents. In the Arabian and barb it is thin, silky, and highly ornamental. The English race-horse being a mixture of the Arab and the barb, with a very small proportion of the northern blood, has this ornament in nearly as great a degree as the Arab or barb. The English hunter has it in a less degree, but in sufficient quantity and strength for the defence of the pastern against furze, thorns, and flints; but there are many who thin or trim out the fetlock and pastern in such a manner, in order to make the horse appear well-bred, that it is made inadequate to the purpose for which it was intended. Hence it is that punctures and wounds in the back part of the pastern are so common as we find them. Wounds of the pastern, from the imprudent practice I have just described, often occasion severe lameness, and sometimes of considerable duration. They are generally occasioned by small thorns, which having entered the sheath of the tendon, are, from the hardness of the perforans tendon, turned on their side, and rendered less injurious than they would otherwise be; but even then the irritation they occasion is such as to produce a dreadful degree of lameness, and even locked jaw. This severe injury, however, is not common; more frequently the entrance of the thorn is effectually resisted by the sheath, so that the point is turned upward or downward, and the thorn laid flat on its surface. But most commonly the thorn is turned in an oblique direction, by entering the skin, and both the tendon and its sheath escape injury. Whenever these accidents occur, it is of the utmost importance to remove the thorn as speedily as possible, and this can be done most readily with the instrument named dissecting forceps. The thorn will always be found in an oblique direction, and must be sought for accordingly. The search will always be successful, if careful, and in time. After the thorn has been extracted, an emollient poultice should be applied as long as it is necessary.—_White._

TROLL, _v._ To troll, to run round; to fish with a rod which has a pulley towards the bottom.

Trolling, in the limited sense of the word, means taking jack and pike with the gorge hook; live-bait fishing, when a floated line is used; and snap-fishing, when the angler so places his baited hooks, that, immediately he feels a bite, he strikes with much force, and generally throws over his head, or drags the jack or pike on shore, instead of playing his victim till he is exhausted.

Trolling is a valuable branch of fishing, affording the angler several months’ amusement during the year, and it may be practised without danger to the health, when every other mode of angling ceases to be either profitable or prudent to follow; for as the winter approaches, fish seldom rise to the surface of the water, but leave the sharps, shallows, and scouers, for the more deep and still parts of rivers or other waters; the fly-fisherman may then lay by his tackle till the ensuing spring is well advanced.—_Salter._

TROT, _v._ To move with a high jolting pace.

TROT, _s._ The jolting high pace of a horse.

TROUT, _s._ A delicate spotted fish inhabiting brooks and quick streams.

This very elegant species is plentifully distributed through the British waters, and varies in weight from a few ounces to fifteen or even thirty pounds.

The general shape of trouts is rather long than broad; in several of the Scotch and Irish lakes and rivers, they grow so much thicker than in those of England, that a fish from eighteen to twenty-two inches will often weigh from three to five pounds. The trout is a fish of prey, has a short roundish head, blunt nose, mouth wide, and filled with teeth, not only in the jaws, but on the palate and tongue: the scales are small, their back is ash colour, the sides yellow, and when in season, is sprinkled all over the body and covers of the gills with small beautiful red and black spots; the tail is broad.

There are several sorts of trout, differing in their size, (for in many of the smaller streams there are trouts that always continue small, but are very great breeders,) shape, and hue; but the flesh of the best is either red or yellow when dressed; the female fish has a smaller head and deeper body than the male, and is of superior flavour. In fact the colours of the trout and the spots vary greatly in different waters and at distinct seasons, yet each may be reduced to one species. In Lyndive, a lake in South Wales, are trout called coch-y-dail, with red and black spots as big as sixpences; others unmarked, and of a reddish hue, that sometimes weigh nearly ten pounds, but are ill-tasted. In Lough Neagh, in Ireland, are trout called buddaghs, which rise to thirty pounds; and some (probably of the same species) are taken in Ulleswater, in Cumberland, of still greater weight; and both those are supposed to be similar with the large trout of the lake of Geneva, a fish says Mr. Pennant which I have eaten of more than once, and think very indifferent.

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A trout taken in Llynallet, in Denbighshire, which is famous for its excellent kind, was singularly marked and shaped; it measured seventeen inches in length, depth three and three quarters, and weighed one pound ten ounces; the head thick, nose sharp, both jaws as well as the head, of a pale brown, blotched with black; the teeth sharp and strong, dispersed in the jaws, roof of the mouth, and tongue (as is the case with the whole genus, except the gwinniad, which is toothless, and the grayling, which has none on the tongue), the back was dusky, and sides tinged with a purplish bloom, both above and below the side line, which was straight, and marked with deep purple spots, mixed with black. The belly was white; the first dorsal fin was spotted; the spurious fin brown, tipped with red; the pectoral, ventral, and anal fins of a pale brown; the edges of the latter white; the tail very little forked when extended.

Some peculiar remarks upon the various sorts of trout in the northern counties of England, and of their growth and age, have been given by a very experienced angler, to the following effect:—That he does not undertake to determine whether the river or burn trout are of one species: in many points the trout taken out of the same river and same pools will agree, and in some shall vary; so that, if the difference were owing to the water or food, he could say nothing against their being of one species: he believes they spawn promiscuously together, are all similar in shape, in the number of their fins, and their fins being disposed in the same places. Whether the colour of the spots make any specific variety, he leaves to the decision of naturalists; but, in his opinion, the so much esteemed char, both red and white, is only a meer or marsh trout, and the colour perhaps owing to the sex. In several of the northern rivers he has taken trouts as red and as well tasted as any char, and whose bones, when potted, have dissolved, like those of the char. That about Michaelmas he had caught trouts of a coppered hue, without spots; the flesh when dressed, was like bees-wax, and well tasted: that likewise in April he took one of these trout twenty-eight inches and thick in proportion, which boiled yellow, but was equally good; and this he thinks was the bull trout mentioned by Walton, and several authors, as extraordinary both for its size and goodness, and to be found no where but in Northumberland. He records a still larger fish caught in the same river (the Cocquet) by him in September, near Brenkburn Abbey; the length, which was nearly a yard, did not strike this gentleman so much, as the bright spots upon the lateral line; by which it appeared to him to be an overgrown burn trout, and neither a salmon, salmon-trout, nor the same with those two he thought were the bull trout.

Walton mentions the Fordwich trout taken in the river Stour, of which only one instance was ever known of their being caught by the angle, and are said to be delicious eating; one weighing twenty-six pounds, and of a most beautiful colour, was taken with a net in December 1797; they grow to a larger size.

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The burn or river trout, with plenty of food and good water, grows rapidly; several experiments were made in ponds fed by river water, and some by clear springs, into which the young fry have been put at five or six months old (that is, in September or October, reckoning from April, when they first come from the spawning-beds) at which time they will be six or seven inches long; in eighteen months the change has been surprising; he has seen a pond drained ten months after being thus stocked, which was in July, when the fish were fifteen months old; some were fifteen or sixteen inches, others not more than eleven or twelve; the fish were returned into the pond, and it was again drained the March following, when some were twenty-two inches, and weighed three pounds; others were sixteen inches, and some not more than twelve.

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In March, or, if mild open weather, in February, trouts begin to leave their winter quarters, and approach the shallows and tails of streams, where they cleanse and restore themselves to health; as they acquire strength they advance still higher up the rivers, until they fix upon their summer residence, for which they generally choose an eddy, behind a stone, a log, or bank that projects forward into the water, and against which the current drives; whirlpools and holes into which sharps and shallows fall, under roots of trees, and in places shaded by boughs and bushes; in small rivers they frequently lie under sedges and weeds, especially in the beginning of the year, before their perfect strength is recovered; but when in their prime, they feed in the swiftest streams, and are often found at the upper end of mill-pools, at locks, flood-gates, and weirs, also under bridges, or between two streams running from under their arches, and likewise in the returns of streams, where the water seems to boil; in the decline of summer, they lie at mill-tails, or the end of other streams, and in the deep water.

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Trout spawn, or deposit their ova and seminal fluid in the end of the autumn or beginning of winter, from the middle of November till the beginning of January; their maturity depending upon the temperature of the season, their quantity of food, &c. From some time (a month or six weeks) before they are prepared for the sexual function, or that of reproduction, they become less fat, particularly the females; the large quantity of eggs and their size, probably affecting the health of the animal, and compressing generally the vital organs in the abdomen. They are at least six weeks or two months after they have spawned before they recover their flesh; and the time when these fish are at the worst is likewise the worst time for fly-fishing, both on account of the cold weather, and because there are fewer flies on the water than at any other season.

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It has been remarked by many other people, as well as myself, that, of all fish in existence, there is not one that you can partake of so many days in succession, without ceasing to enjoy it, as a trout, provided it be fresh caught, and well in season. Almost every sportsman, and every fishmonger, has his own way of fancying that he can tell when a trout is in season. As to the red spots on the skin having any thing to do with it, the very idea is absurd and fallacious. But the more general criterions are a small head and high crest, a full tail, and the roof of the mouth, or, what is still better, the flesh under the tongue being rather of a pink colour. Another excellent criterion, which was explained to me by Mr. Joseph Miller, the fishmonger in Piccadilly, is the smallness and tightness of the vent; for the better the trout is in season, the smaller will be that vent-hole, which is formed just before the under or belly-fin. And, after all, I prefer this, and one other way of deciding; which is by the bright and silver-like appearance of the scales. Take twenty trout, and, I think, if you dress them all, and previously mark that one on which the scales shone the brightest, it will prove to be the best fish. This may be frequently ascertained, even before you land a trout, as a bright one, on being first hooked, generally gives two or three leaps out of the water.

Before you send trout on a journey, always have them cleaned and gutted, and let them be laid on their backs, and closely packed in willow (not flag) baskets, and with either flags or dry wheat-straw. Packing in damp grass or rushes is apt to ferment, and therefore liable to spoil your fish.

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Salmon and trout were here to be found among the rest. Indeed the people asserted there were nine kinds of the former, for all of which they had names, each kind making its appearance in the river at different periods of the year. This must of course be a mistake, as so many varieties of that fish do not, I imagine, exist.

Altogether I caught thirty-seven trout and salmon, their aggregate weight being two hundred and twenty-six pounds, or on an average something better than six pounds a-piece. The greatest number I killed in any one day were seven, and the largest I took was eighteen pounds; this weight was however comparatively nothing, for in the river below the falls salmon were occasionally taken in nets weighing forty, fifty, sixty, and even seventy pounds.

The trout are very fine at Trolhattan; I have killed them upwards of twelve pounds’ weight. They are about the best grown fish I ever saw in my life.

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The high flavour and red colour for which the fish taken in Lochleven are so famed, are understood to arise from the ford by which they are supported in the loch; it being a general rule that while the flesh of trout is white in clear and limpid waters, the same sort, when found where the rivers pass slowly through a tract of foul or meadow ground, have less or more redness in their colour. A considerable part of the bottom of Lochleven is spongy, from which aquatic plants rise in great abundance; and in many parts, towards the beginning of autumn, cover the surface of the water with their flowers. But the circumstance to which the high colour of the Lochleven trout is chiefly ascribed, is the vast quantity of a small red shell fish which abounds in the bottom of the loch, and especially among the aquatic plants; its form is globular, and the trouts when caught have often their stomachs full of these shell-fish. They generally lie in deep water, and will not rise to any kind of fly or hook however baited: it has been remarked also, that in Lochleven are discovered all the different species of river trout, and after they have remained some time in the loch, and approached towards one pound in weight, they become red in flesh. (_Vide_ FISHING, ROD, WORM, &c., &c.)—_Daniel_—_Davy_—_Lloyd_—_Wild Sports, &c._

TRUMP, _s._ A trumpet, an instrument of warlike music; a winning card; a card that has particular privileges in a game.

TRUMP, _v._ To win with a trump card.

TRUSS, _s._ A bandage by which ruptures are restrained from lapsing.

TRUSSING, _s._ Term applied to a hawk when she raises a fowl into the air, and descends rapidly again.

TUMBLER, _s._ One who shows postures or feats of activity; a pigeon.

TUMID, _a._ Swelling, puffed up; protuberant, raised above the level; pompous, boasting, puffy, falsely sublime.

TUN, _s._ A large cask; two pipes, the measure of four hogsheads; any large quantity proverbially; a drunkard, in burlesque; the weight of two thousand pounds; a ton.

TURBITH MINERAL, _s._ Subsulphate of mercury, yellow mercurial emetic, or vitriolated quicksilver.

This mercurial preparation is seldom used in veterinary practice, being apt to irritate the stomach and bowels, and bring on violent purging; but it has been recommended as a remedy for farcy.

The dose is from half a drachm to a drachm.

It is given as an emetic to dogs, when they have swallowed any poisonous substance, or at the commencement of the distemper.—WHITE.

_Turf_, _s._ A clod covered with grass; a part of the surface of the ground; a kind of fuel; a racecourse. _To be on the turf_, to be engaged in horse-racing.

_Turnip_, _s._ A white esculent root.

_Turnpike_, _s._ A cross of two bars armed with pikes at the end, and turning on a pin, fixed to hinder horses from entering: a gate erected on the road to collect tolls to defray the expense of repairing roads.

_Turnspit_, _s._ He who anciently turned a spit; a dog used for this purpose.

_Turpentine_, _s._ The gum exuded by the pine, the juniper, and other trees of that kind.

Of turpentines there are four kinds, viz. Chio, Strasburg, Venice, and common turpentine; the two last only are employed in veterinary medicine. They are effectual diuretics, and possess a considerable carminative power. Common turpentine is a principal ingredient in digestive and detergent ointments. By distillation we obtain from it the oil, or, as it is sometimes termed, the spirit of turpentine, a medicine of great utility. In doses from two to three or four ounces, it frequently cures the flatulent colic or gripes; and, when combined with camphor and other stimulants, makes a good embrocation for indurated swellings, strains, and bruises. When properly mixed with mustard, it forms an embrocation that has been found serviceable in counteracting internal inflammation. I have seen it applied to obstinate ulcers with good effect. It is a useful ingredient in blistering-ointment and liniments.

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In speaking of the turpentines, Dr. Paris says they all possess the same chemical as well as medicinal properties, viz. Canada turpentine, or Canada balsam, as it is sometimes improperly called, is obtained from the Pinus Balsamea. 2dly, Chian or Cyprus turpentine, from the Pistachia Terebinthinus. 3dly, Common, or horse turpentine, from the Pinus Sylvestris, or Scotch fir. 4thly, Venice turpentine from the Pinus Larix; from the twigs of this species of fir the essence of spruce is made. True Riga balsam is made from the shoots of the Pinus Cembra, previously bruised and macerated for a month in water. The same fir also yields Briançon turpentine.

Venice turpentine is generally made by mixing oil with the common turpentine, which is easily done when the latter is melted.

Venice turpentine is sometimes employed as an ingredient in cough medicines. The dose is about half an ounce. But if given as a remedy for flatulent colic, or as a diuretic, a larger quantity is necessary. It makes a good detergent ointment, if mixed with about a fourth or a third part of red precipitate, finely powdered.

Dr. Latham considers it a valuable medicine in epilepsy. As a veterinary medicine it is certainly of great value; and though in a few cases, when given internally, it has produced violent effects, merely, I believe, from bad management, yet, when judiciously administered, it may be employed in a dose of four ounces, with advantage and safety.

I have long discontinued the use of oil of turpentine in my practice as a remedy for flatulent colic, gripes, or fret; finding the preparations of opium far more effectual.—_White._

TURTLE, _s._ The sea tortoise.

TURTLE DOVE (_Columba turtur_, LINN.; _La Tourtourelle_, BUFF.), _s._

Length somewhat more than twelve inches; the bill is brown; eyes yellow, encompassed with a crimson circle; the top of the head is ash-colour, mixed with olive; each side of the neck is marked with a spot of black feathers, tipped with white: the back is ash-colour, each feather margined with reddish brown; wing coverts and scapulars reddish brown, spotted with black; quill feathers dusky, with pale edges; the fore part of the neck and the breast are of a light purplish red; the belly, thighs, and vent, white; the two middle feathers of the tail are brown, the others dusky tipped with white; the two outermost also edged with the same; the legs are red.

The note of the turtle dove is singularly tender and plaintive; in addressing his mate the male makes use of a variety of winning attitudes, cooing at the same time in the most gentle and soothing accents; on which account the turtle dove has been represented in all ages as the most perfect emblem of connubial attachment and constancy. The turtle arrives late in the spring, and departs about the latter end of August; it frequents the thickest and most sheltered parts of the woods, where it builds its nest on the highest trees; the female lays two eggs, and has only one brood in this country, but in warmer climates it is supposed to breed several times in the year. Turtles are pretty common in Kent, where they are sometimes seen in flocks of twenty or more, frequenting the pea fields, and are said to do much damage. Their stay with us seldom exceeds more than four or five months, during which time they pair, build their nests, and rear their young, which are strong enough to join them in their retreat.—_Bewick._

TUSH or TUSK, _s._ The long tooth of a fighting animal, the fang, the holding tooth.

TUSKED or TUSKY, _a._ Furnished with tusks.

TWINE, _s._ A twisted thread; twist, convolution; embrace; act of convolving itself round.

TWINLING, _s._ A twin lamb, a lamb of two brought at a birth.

TWITCH, _v._ To pluck with a quick motion, to snatch.

The twitch is a very necessary instrument in a stable, though, when frequently and unnecessarily used, it may have the ill effect of rendering some horses violent and vicious to resist its future application. In many instances blindfolding will do more than the twitch; and some horses may be quieted, when the pain is not excessive, by holding the ear in one hand, and rubbing the point of it with the other. A firm but soothing manner will often engage the attention and prevent violence; but it is seldom that either threats or punishment render an unruly horse better. Inexperienced persons guard themselves against the hind feet only, but they should be aware that some horses strike as truly and as terribly with their fore feet: it is prudent therefore, in all operations, to blindfold the animal, and the more so, as by this he becomes particularly intimidated, nor will he often strike without an aim. Barnacles are a sort of clams used by smiths, into which they introduce the nose in the manner of a twitch. They are only admissible when a person is so situated as to be wholly without assistance.—_Blaine._