BLEMISHES
—are so called which constitute disfiguration and eyesore, without impediment to sight or action; it is therefore readily conceived, a horse may be very materially blemished without being unsound. Blemishes are various, and many of them not to be immediately perceived, in a superficial survey of the subject: broken knees are a very material and conspicuous blemish: splents, if large, are unpleasing to the eye of the good judge and nice investigator: warts are easily observed, and as easily cured: thrushes, and a carious state of the frogs, not to be known but by an examination of the feet: sandcracks, previously cured, sometimes remain unseen, but are always liable to a renewal of the original defect: the marks of former blistering is, in general, to be plainly perceived by a variation in colour, or an unnatural roughness in the hair of those parts: the marks of firing-irons may be easily traced (however neatly performed) upon the hocks for spavins and curbs, or upon the back of the shank-bones for strains in the back sinews. A horse may be blemished by a speck in the eye, arising from a blow with the lash of a whip or switch; this is frequently no more than a partial thickening of a small part of the outer humour of the eye, not obstructing those rays of light which constitute vision.
If a horse is warranted "perfectly sound, without blemish, free from vice, steady to ride, and quiet in harness," it is a full and general warranty speaking for itself; leaving very little for the intentional purchaser to do (in respect to inspection) if he has previously tried and approved the paces of the horse. But where a warranty seemingly guarded, or cautiously partial, is offered, a proper degree of circumspection will be necessary to prevent a chance of early repentance; a prevention of litigation will prove less expensive than the cure of a lawsuit.