234 MODERN FARRIER. 



of all superfluous fats and fluids, as well as to im- 

 prove the breathing ; but purging and sweating 

 ought to be carefully and judiciously used, and a 

 proper regard should be paid to the constitution of 

 the animal. 



'We have happily got quit,' says Mr. Scott, in 

 his British Field Sports, ' of much of the stoving in 

 hot and suffocating stables, and of the excessive and 

 debilitating purgation of former days. Even the 

 malignant and bewitching humours, always sup- 

 posed to be resident in the body of the horse, have 

 been nearly laughed and exorcised out of it, since 

 the salutary horse-laugh originally raised against 

 them by Gibson and Bracken ; and could we but 

 both reason and experiment away the exhausting, 

 enfeebling, spirit-quelling, crippling sweat, we should 

 render our training and running stable system very 

 near to perfection ; which indeed already is, with 

 the above stated exceptions, the most correct, ma- 

 turely considered, and comfortable to the horse, of 

 any other in existence.' 



In continuation, the same writer says, * Speed 

 materially depends on the freshness, elasticity, and 

 healthy tone of the sinews, which one would sup- 

 pose can scarcely be promoted by a weekly laborious 

 and fatiguing gallop of four or six miles, under a 

 vv^eight, alive or dead, of perhaps fifteen or sixteen 

 stone ; the horse not perhaps fairly able to race with 

 twelve — all horses beside, whatever their powers, 

 age, nature, or constitution, being treated in the 

 same way. If there be any satisfactory experi- 

 mental proofs to invalidate the above arguments, 

 such have not reached me ; I have never heard any 

 other plea for the necessity of forcibly reducing run- 

 ning horses to the state of hone-leanness, than that 

 of custom and opinion ; and to dismiss this part of 

 the subject, granting that a severe method of train- 

 ing would ensure a somewhat greater superiority of 

 performance, would it not be preferable on all hands 



