HORSES. 43 



exhibit at the Royal, you are a fortunate and isolated 

 man, and should make long figures. This is the 

 poetry of farming, a path not open to the million. 



Horse-dung, as manure, is heating, and should be 

 well mixed with colder kinds, as cow-dung, for in- 

 stance, which again is slow to heat, a process, how- 

 ever, I may as well mention here at once, to be 

 hastened by spreading in the heap alternate layers 

 of refuse tanners' bark. 



All young cart-horses should be regularly mouthed. 

 To break in the usual way, by simply putting them 

 between two others in the team to go to coal, when 

 they must go as steadily as on a treadmill, suffices 

 for farm purposes, but is apt to leave their mouths 

 most terribly callous. 



I like keeping a breaker's bit some time in the 

 colt's mouth, even after he has become tame and 

 steady at his work. I have one put instead of the 

 iron handle-shaped smooth bar that ordinarily arches 

 the lower end of the cart-harness bridle : and a piece 

 of strong elastic is inserted in the rein, so that when, 

 as is usual at work, the bridle is hung over the 

 hames, the colt champs his bit and learns a fitting 

 carriage, instead of helplessly hanging by it until his 

 mouth becomes as impassible as an eel-skin. 



The hours for working horses vary in different 

 counties and districts. Our teams go out from eight 

 till twelve, one till five. In some places they go out 

 very early in the morning, both men and horses 

 resting during the heat. This plan I should like to 

 adopt, but it is difficult to keep good men if they 

 deem your practice an unpleasant exception to the 



