470 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



which entails such misery and destruction of life can not be too strongly 

 commented upon." If we take the age of three years as that at which 

 horses begin to work, and twelve as that at which they are worn out, 

 it follows that the period of their efficiency is shorter by at least four-, 

 teen years than it should be. In other words, the nation has to buy 

 three horses when it ought to buy only one, and thus upward of 

 200,000,000 are spent every twenty-one years in the purchase of 

 horses when 68,000,000 ought to suffice. The loss, therefore, to the 

 nation is at least 135,000,000 in twenty-one years. 



If this were all, the question would surely be most serious ; but it 

 is not all. Unless the facts thus far stated can be set aside, our horses 

 work on the average seven or eight years ; but how do they work ? 

 The collective experience of the country will answer that the work is 

 done at the cost of frequent interruptions, and with an amount of dis- 

 comfort and pain which often becomes agony. It is easy to say that 

 much of the evil must be laid to the charge of grooms and stable-men; 

 and perhaps the censures dealt out to these men are not undeserved. 

 They are, at least, outspoken. In the last century Lord Pembroke 

 spoke of grooms as being " generally the worst informed of all persons 

 living." "No other servant," says Mr. Mayhew, "possesses such 

 power, and no domestic more abuses his position. It is impossible to 

 amend the regulation of any modern stable without removing some of 

 this calling, or overthrowing some of the abuses with a perpetuation 

 of which the stable servant is directly involved." In this state of 

 things the most humane of masters becomes, he adds, an unconscious 

 tyrant to the brute which serves him so well. It is a miserable fact 

 that grooms on their own responsibility are in the habit of administer- 

 ing secretly to horses medicines the cost of which they pay themselves. 

 It may fairly be said that in every case the remedy is ill-judged, and 

 creates worse mischief than that which it is designed to remove. 

 Among these medicines, arsenic, antimony, and niter seem to be the 

 favorites ; but the list of remedies is not ended Avith these. The ex- 

 perience of ages, if it has failed to do more, has impressed on them the 

 fact that the chief source of the sufferings of horses is to be found in 

 the foot. The suspicion that the foot is not treated rightly by the 

 traditionary method never enters their minds ; and they deal with the 

 limb not from a knowledge of its anatomy, structure, and purpose, but 

 in accordance with the popular notions, which are, in plain speech, out- 

 rageously absurd. In profound ignorance that the hoof is porous, they 

 apply hoof-ointments, which answer to cement plastered on a wall. If 

 these were in constant use, Mr. Douglas asserts emphatically that not 

 a morsel of sound horn would remain at the end of six months on the 

 horses, and shoeing would become an impossibility. If the groom be 

 told that he is thus preventing the internal moisture from reaching the 

 outer surface and the air from circulating iuAvard, his only answer is 

 an incredulous laugh. His conviction is that the hoof should not come 



