HORSES AND THEIR FEET. 471 



into contact with hard material, and that the horse can be best fitted 

 for his work by having his feet smeared with tar, beeswax, or tallow, 

 and by resting always on a heap of litter in the stable. It would be of 

 little use to cite Lord Pembroke as declaring that " the constant use 

 of litter makes the feet tender and causes swelled legs ; moreover, it 

 renders the animals delicate. Swelled legs may be frequently reduced 

 to their proper natural size by taking away the litter only, which, in 

 some stables, where ignorant grooms and farriers govern, would be a 

 great saving of bleeding and physic, besides straw. ... I have seen," 

 he adds, " by repeated experiments, legs swell and unswell by leaving 

 litter or taking it away, like mercury in a weather-glass " ; and his 

 experience is confirmed by the general condition of troopers' horses, in 

 contrast with those of their officers, which are bedded down all day. 



But, if there are evils for which grooms are in large measure di- 

 rectly responsible and the abolition of which they would beyond doubt 

 stoutly resist, there are others in which masters are not less blamewor- 

 thy than their men, and from which the public generally as well as the 

 animals are constant sufferers. The work of the horse is that of drag- 

 ging and carrying ; and the aim of the owner should be the accom- 

 plishment of this work with the utmost possible sureness and with the 

 fewest accidents. Serious and fatal injuries may be the result of 

 stumblings and slippings not less than of actual falls ; and the prema- 

 ture wearing out of horses by excessive straining of their sinews and 

 muscles is a direct pecuniary loss to the owners, although few of them 

 seem to realize the true significance of the fact. These evils are to be 

 seen everywhere, and they affect horses kept for the ^^urpose of plea- 

 sure and ostentation almost as much as those which spend their days 

 in a round of monotonous drudgery. A horse should not be obliged 

 to work in going down a hill ; but, in fact, they are subject to the 

 severest strain just when they ought to have none, if they are harnessed 

 to springless carts or wagons without breaks. Farm-horses suffer with 

 terrible severity from this cause"; but the horses used in carrying 

 trades and by railway companies undergo a more cruel ordeal. Im- 

 provements in the break-power of wagojis used on roads, which might 

 greatly lessen the mischief, are not made, and hence the horses are 

 seldom free from diseases more or less serious, which may be traced 

 directly to constant slipping and shaking over slippery pavements. 

 Among ignorant owners, blind to their own interests, there is an im- 

 pression that " the work which kills one horse will bring in money 

 enough to buy another " ; but experience has sufficiently shown the 

 fallacy of this theory, whether the overtaxed slave be a horse or a 

 human being. In towns and cities the roads are, and must be, paved, 

 and the pavings at present are variously of stone, wood, or asphalt, 

 where the road is not macadamized. These pavements have, it would 

 seem, each its own peculiar dangers for the horses which use them ; 

 and each has thus become a fruitful source of controversy. If any 



