SUPERFICIAL AREA AND HEIGHT REQUIRED. 183 
FOUNDATIONS. 
In MOST CASES stables are not built of more than the basement story, 
with a loft over, which is generally, almost entirely, constructed in 
the roof; the walls, therefore, are not high, and do not require deep 
foundations, even if they are built on clay, which is more lable to 
cause cracks, &c. than any other species of soil of a uniform character. 
It is a very common plan, on this account, to lay the foundations of 
any kind of coarse and stony material; but if this is done, a course 
of broken slates should be laid in cement a little above the level of the 
ground ; or, instead of this, a course or two of hard bricks should be 
laid in the same material, so as to prevent the damp from striking up the 
walls by capillary attraction. A neglect of this precaution has, in several 
instances within my own knowledge, kept stables damp in spite of atten- 
tion to drainage and a resort to all sorts of expedients which could be 
carried out subsequent to the building of the walls. 
SUPERFICIAL AREA AND HEIGHT REQUIRED. 
THE Horsé, like all the higher animals, requires a constant supply of 
pure air to renovate his blood, and yet it must not be admitted in a strong 
current flowing directly upon him, or it will chill the surface and give 
him cold. Artificial means of warming stables are objected to on account 
of their costliness, and of the constant and careful supervision which they 
demand, so that the horse is dependent upon his own heat-producing 
powers for keeping up the temperature of the air in which he breathes. 
Hence, it is a matter for experimental research to ascertain what number 
of cubic feet of air can supply him with what he wants for the purifying 
of his blood, without reducing the temperature of the stable generally, and 
without the necessity for admitting blasts of cold air. By common consent 
it is allowed that no stable divided into stalls should give to each horse 
less than 800 or 1,000 cubic feet, and a loose box should not contain less 
than 1,300 to 1,500 cubic feet. An inexperienced person may perhaps 
fail to discover the reason why a loose box should provide more air for its 
inhabitant than a stall; but those who are accustomed to use horses, will 
see at once that the air is more or less changed in a large stable every 
time the door is opened, which act is repeated a great many times in the 
day, while the door of the loose box is often kept closed, with the excep- 
tion of the hours of feeding and dressing. Much will depend upon the 
thickness of the walls, the nature of their materials, and the exposure of 
their outer surfaces to the weather; for a fourteen-inch brick wall will 
retain the heat within its inclosure much more completely than one of 
nine inches built of the same materials, and this remark applies still more 
strictly in the case of a wall built of absorbent stone, or inferior bricks. 
If a substantially-built stable is kept properly clean, and its ventilation is 
well arranged, my own opinion is that a comparatively limited area is 
better for its inmates than an extravagantly large one. A “very airy” 
stable generally means one which is so high that it cannot be kept warm, 
and in such I have generally seen staring coats and heard coughs per- 
petually going on. I have myself tried different stables, allowing an area 
of 750, 850, and 950 cubical feet per horse, extending to three or four 
stalls ; but I confess that my leaning has been rather to the lowest than 
the highest of these numbers. The most healthy on I ever used scarcely 
