LITTER. 347 



smooth and glossy to satisfy the most fastidious. The over-heated air of a 

 close stable saves much of this grooming, and therefore the idle attendant 

 unscrupulously sacrifices the health and safety of the horse. 



If the stable is close, the air will not only be hot, but foul. The breathing 

 of every animal contaminates it; and when, in the course of the night, 

 with every aperture, even the key-hole, stopped, it passes again and again 

 through the lungs, the blood cannot undergo its proper and healthy cliange ; 

 digestion cannot be so perfectly performed, and all the functions of life are 

 injured. Let the owner of the valuable horse think of his passing twenty 

 or twenty-two, out of the twenty-four hours, in this debilitating atmosphere. 

 Nature does wonders in enabling every animal to accommodate itself to the 

 situation in which it is placed, and the horse that lives in the stable-oven 

 sutlers less from it than would scarcely be conceived possible; but he does 

 not and cannot possess the power and the hardihood which he would acquire 

 under other circumstances. 



The air of the improperly-close stable is still further contaminated by 

 the urine and dung, which rapidly ferment in the heat, and give out 

 stimulating and unwholesome vapours. When a person first enters an ill- 

 managed stable, and especially early in the morning, he is annoyed not 

 only by the heat of the confined air, but by a pungent smell, resembling 

 hartshorn; and can he wonder at the inflammation of the eyes, and the 

 chronic cough, and the inflammation of the lungs, with which the animal, 

 that has been shut up in this vitiated atmosphere alljiight, is often attacked; 

 or if glanders and farcy should occasionally break out in such stables? It 

 has been ascertained, by chemical experiment, that the urine of tlie horse 

 contains in it an exceedingly large quantity of hailshorn ; and, not only so, 

 but that, influenced by the lieat of a crowded stable, and possibly by other de- 

 compositions that are going forward at the same time, this ammoniacal vapour 

 begins to be rapidly given out, almost immediately after the urine is voided. 



When disease begins to appear among the inhabitants of these ill- 

 ventilated places, is it wonderful that it should rapidly spread among them, 

 and that the plague-spot should be, as it were, placed on the door of such 

 a stable? When distemper appears in spring or in autumn, it is, in very 

 many cases, to be traced fii'st of all to such a pest-house. It is peculiarly 

 fatal there. The horses belonging to a small establishment, and rationally 

 treated, have it comparatively seldom, or have it lightly ; but, among the 

 inmates of a crowded stable, it is sure to display itself, and there it is most 

 of all fatal. The experience of every veterinary surgeon, and of every 

 large proprietor of horses, will corroborate this statement. Agriculturists 

 should bring to their stables the common sense which directs them in the 

 usual concerns of life ; and should begin, when their pleasures and their 

 property are so much at stake, to assume that authority, and to enforce that 

 obedience, to the lack of which is to be attributed the greater part of bad 

 stable- management and horse disease. Of nothing are we more certain, 

 than that the majority of the maladies of the horse, and those of the worst 

 find most fatal character, are directly or indirectly to be attributed to the 

 /mnatural heat of the stable, and the sudden change of the animal from a 

 high to a low, or from a low to a high temperature. 



LITTER. 



Having spoken of the vapour of harrtshorn, which is so rapidly and so 

 plentifully given out from the urine of a horse in a heated stable, we take 

 next into consideration the subject of litter. The first caution is frequently 

 vo remove it. The early extrication of gas shows the rapid putrefaction of 

 the urine' and the consequence of which will be the rapid putrefaction of 



