HORSES. 39 



and, if he will drink it, it should be so for some days 

 after. For other excellent recipes and directions let 

 me refer you to Clater. 



Here let me protest, as so many have done before, 

 against keeping a bucket of water in the stable to 

 take the chill off. It soon becomes stale : a little 

 warm water should rather be added to the cold, fresh 

 drawn. Hard water may be softened for drinking, 

 by having a ball of clay thrown into it. 



Bran mashes, too, require much more attention 

 than is usually bestowed upon them: they should, 

 as tea, be made with boiling water ; then they 

 should be left to get cool for a sick horse, cold 

 for another. Water, hot, but not boiling, does not 

 extract the virtue of the bran. After physic get the 

 horse to drink as much lukewarm water as he will, 

 and have him led about until the ball begins to 

 work: then put him in, or you may cause inflamma- 

 tion. Cart-horses, both from their breed and their 

 being unclothed, cannot be expected to cany coats 

 of the fineness of the thorough-bred. This, how- 

 ever, the carter is too apt to attempt to bring about ; 

 and he consequently not only appropriates all the 

 eggs he can about the homestead, which he adminis- 

 ters as a ball with the shell half smashed, but he is 

 prone also to give powders and briony-root (by the 

 use of which, ultimately he blinds, probably, the best 

 team), or a few chopped leaves of box, in the pro- 

 portion of as much as will cover a sixpence to a feed 

 of corn. All this trifling is very dangerous and use- 

 less : for why should the plough-horse be expected to 

 carry a lustrous short coat ? A large farmer, in Nor- 



