PAVED FLOOR 217 



stable should be built like a Japanese house 

 with transparent and portable screens, close 

 fitting against draughts; which can be set up 

 on two windward sides with every shift of the 

 weather. By no other means can the diseases 

 be swept away w^hich make the stabled horse 

 a byword for unsoundness. 



If regions of hardest ground produce the 

 best legs and hoofs, it does not follow^ that 

 stables ought to be paved. Natural ground 

 however hard is springy, but pavement is dead 

 hard and slippery at that. The English 

 horseman explains " It haint the 'unting as 

 'urts the 'orses 'oofs, but the 'ammer, 'ammer, 

 'ammer, on the 'ard 'igh road." All who have 

 seen the strains and tensions of cowpunching 

 and noted the perfect soundness of cow ponies 

 will agree that it haint the 'unting. But an}^- 

 body who watches English horsemen with 

 pleasure horses has noted the exceeding care 

 with which they are ridden on the dirt rather 

 than on the crown of a road, on the grass by the 

 road rather than on the highways, and on any 

 open route across country, rather than on the 

 roadside. They get very much less hard going 

 than the average range horse. The draught 

 horse may suffer from the highway, but 

 certainly not the hunter who is equally unsound. 



