FOOD. 359 



14S ; parsnips, 99; carrots, 98. Of the grasses, 1000 parts of the meadow 

 cat's tail contain at the time of seeding 98 parts of nutritive matter ; narrow- 

 leaved meadow grass in seed, and sweet-scented soft grass in flower, 95; 

 narrow-leaved and flat-stalked meadow grass in flower, fertile meadow 

 grass in seed, and tall fescue, in flower, 93; fertile meadow grass, meadow 

 fescue, reed-like fescue, and creeping soft grass in flower, 78 ; sweet- 

 scented soft grass in flower, and the aftermath, 77 ; florin, cut in winter, 

 76 ; tall fescue, in the aftermath, and meadow soft grass in flower, 74 ; 

 cabbage, 73; crested dog's tail and brome flowering, 71; yellow oat, in 

 flower, GG ; Swedish turnips, 64; narrow-leaved meadow grass, creeping 

 beet, round-headed cocksfoot, and spiked fescue, 59 ; roughish and fertile 

 meadow grass, flowering, 5G ; florin, in summer, 54; common turnips, 

 42; saint-foin, and broad-leaved and long-rooted clover, 39; white clover, 

 32 ; and lucern, 23. 



The times of feeding should be as equally divided as convenience will 

 permit; and when it is likely that the horse will be kept longer than usual 

 from home, the nose-bag should invariably be taken. The small stomach 

 of the horse is emptied in a few hours; and if he is suffered to remain 

 hungry much beyond his accustomed time, he will afterwards devour his 

 food so voraciously as to distend the stomach and endanger an attack of 

 staggers. When this disease appears in the farmer's stable, he may attribute 

 it to various causes ; the true one, in the majority of instances, is irregu- 

 larity in feeding. If the reader will turn back to page 104, he will be con- 

 vinced that this deserves moi'e serious attention than is generally given to it. 



When extra work is required from the animal, the system of management 

 is often injudicious; for a double feed is put before him, and as soon as he 

 has swallowed it, he is started. It would be far better to give him a double 

 feed on the previous evening, which will be digested before he is wanted, 

 and then he may set out in the morning after a very small portion of 

 corn has been given to him, or perhaps only a little hay. One of the most 

 successful methods of enabling a horse to get well through a long journey 

 is to give him only a little at a time while on the road, and at night to give 

 him a double feed of corn and a full allowance of beans, 



W^ATER. — This is a part of stable management little regarded by the 

 farmer. He lets his horses loose morning and night, and they go to the 

 nearest pond or brook, and drink their fill, and no liarm results; for they 

 obtain that kind of water which nature designed them to have, in a manner 

 prepared for them by some unknown influence of the atmosphere, as well 

 as by the deposition of many saline admixtures. The diflerence between 

 hard and soft water is known to every one. In hard water soap will curdle, 

 vegetables will not boil soft, and the saccharine matter of the malt cannot 

 be fully obtained in the process of brewing. There is nothing in which 

 the difl^erent effect of hard and soft water is so evident as in the stomach 

 and digestive organs of the horse. Ifard water, drawn fresh from the 

 well, will assuredly make the coat of a norse unaccustomed to it stare, and 

 it will not unfrequently gripe and otherwise injure him. Instinct or expe- 

 rience has made even the horse conscious of this, for he will never drink 

 hard water if he has access to soft: he will leave the most transparent and 

 pure water of the well for a river, although the water may be turbid, and 

 even for the muddiest pool.* He is injured, however, not so much by the 

 hardness of the well-water as by its coldness — particularly by its coldness 



♦ Some trainers have so much fear of hard or strangle water, that they carry with them 

 to the different courses the water that the animal has been accustomed to drink, and *^hat 

 they Know ajreea with it. 



