PREPARATION FOR WORK. 203 
readily be understood that the huge quantity of adipose tissue, which is 
carried by a fat horse, will, by its weight alone, retard any attempt at high 
speed. But, not only is fat to be objected to on this score; for it is also 
known by experience, that its pressure on the important internal organs, 
when it is deposited around them, interferes with the proper perform- 
ance of their several functions. The muscles of the limbs, when they are 
marbled with fat, as we see them in the slaughtered ox and sheep, are 
unable to contract vigorously, but when a similar condition occurs in 
the muscular tissue of which the heart is composed, violent exertions are 
interdicted, or, if they are attempted, they are attended with dangerous 
and often fatal results. Again, it is ascertained that sweating has a local, 
as well as a general effect, and that, by producing a copious discharge of 
fluid from the skin covering any particular part, there will be a removal 
of any superfluous fat which may be lodged beneath it, before the rest of 
the body is perceptibly acted on. Hence, when the groom thinks that his 
horse is loaded with fat about the heart, he puts on extra ‘‘sweaters” 
over that part, or on the contrary, if his object is to unload the ridge of 
dense adipose membrane, which constitutes a high crest, he puts on two 
or three extra hoods, and sweats chiefly in that region of the body. ‘The 
local effect of these partial sweats is, perhaps, a good deal overrated, but 
undoubtedly there is some foundation for the general belief. The use of 
clothing for sweating is not nearly so frequent as it used to be, even in 
racing stables, and horses are not now drawn so fine, by a great deai, as 
they were twenty or thirty yearsago. At that time runners in the Derby, 
or in any other great race, when they were saddled, looked like living 
skeletons, and to an eye unaccustomed to the hard lines presented by their 
limbs, the beauty of their forms was entirely gone. Now a different 
system prevails; the object is not to reduce the horse as much as he will 
bear, but te bring him out as big as he can be, consistently with good 
wind. The celebrated trainer, John Scott, has shown what can be done 
in this way, and his example is now generally followed. So also with 
hunters, although they are often required to do more, perhaps, than any 
other variety of the horse, and in the grass countries are made as fit as if 
they were going to run ina steeplechase, yet they are brought to covert 
looking big and full of muscle, without any pretensions to be considered 
as drawn fine. Still the sweat, either in clothes or without them, must be 
occasionally carried out, or the internal organs will continue loaded with 
fat, as is natural to them when they have been for some time in a state of 
rest, coupled with high feeding. The use and amount of sweaters must 
be proportioned to the constitutional peculiarities of the individual ; in 
one horse a slow gallop will produce a perfect lather on the skin, while 
in another treated in all respects in the same way, there shall be hardly a 
hair turned. So also the effect of apparently the same degree of sweating 
on different horses is very variable, producing a great relief in one 
case, and scarcely any in another. The groom must not attempt to carry 
out any fixed rule, but must watch the effect of each day’s work, and 
increase or diminish the amount next day according to circumstances. 
As I before remarked, a sweat may be with clothes or without, the 
object in each case being not so much to do a certain amount of work, 
but to get rid of a fixed quantity of superfluous fat and humours. On 
the other hand, a gallop has quite the opposite end in view, being in- 
tended to brace the muscles, heart, blood vessels and lungs, by stimulating 
them to act in an extraordinary degree, but without any view to reduce 
the weight of the body or any part of it. In a sweat, therefcre, the 
