Sir,

Pardon my addressing you as a stranger, but I hope you will excuse the liberty I take in writing to you when I mention it is only to inform you where you will find some curious facts relating to your studies.—

When I was in India I met the Stud Commission on their tour of inspection which led to their report on perusing which the Government of India gave up horse-breeding in Bengal.—¹

The Commission consisted of Major-General Crawford Chamberlain, President, (now Commanding the Lucknow division, & the members were Colonel Ravenhill, Royal Horse Artillery, & M^r. Hallen, Principal Veterinary Surgeon.—² I met them before their tour was complete, but they told me such interesting facts that when I came home I applied at the India Office for information if the report had been published or not.— As I am only a junior officer, (a surgeon of ten years’ service, passed for promotion, I was not very much surprised to receive no answer, so I asked Col. Ravenhill about it, now that he has come home & is stationed at Canterbury.—

I inclose you his reply, as you see by it that he quite agrees with me about the desirability of printing the Stud Commission report, & suggests that a question in the House of Commons might effect the object.—

However a savant like yourself, Sir, might perhaps have access to the report of the Studs at the India Office without worrying Gov^t. at the end of the Session, & no doubt you would be enabled to make what use you chose of the materials placed at your disposal, which are now lost in official pigeon-holes.—

The Studs were abolished because the damp climate of Bengal proper had a most deteriorating effect on the horses bred in them, though the stock was continually being replenished by arabs, & by thoroughbred horses & mares imported from England at enormous expense.—³

The Commission report is illustrated by photographs of the horses, some of which were shown to me.—

In covering up all the photograph but the head, you would think it was the likeness of a sheep or a goat, for the profile of the face was convex instead of flat & straight; the eyes looked outwards, & apparently not at all to the front; the ears were long & drooping outwards languidly, not “pricked” briskly, & the whole aspect of the animal was decidedly “sheepish” & stupid, though the sires & dams were very handsome & intelligent.—

They had ring bones as big as your head, pasterns as long as your arm, & every conceivable equine disease—

The hoofs were split like those of oxen, not merely on the front, but also underneath, the animal’s foot being held up to let the ground surface of it be photographed— The crack was two inches in depth.—⁴

These Studs were in Behar, the garden of India, the most North Western part of Lower Bengal, a most lovely place each depôt was, but the damp is fatal.—⁵

On the contrary in the Punjab, at the Salt Range, between Jhelum, Rawal Pindi & Pind Dadun Khan,⁶ where the herbage is hardly visible, the ground is baked & the sky is a furnace, both horses & cattle flourish in the dry heat almost as much as they do in England, so the Studs are now removed thither.—

Yrs. respectfully | R. Temple Wright

⁠⟨⁠Surg⁠⟩⁠eon, Bengal army