30 PHYSIOLOGY AT THE FARM. 



like a pair of scissors ; and, while the mouthful is mingled with 

 the saliva, it is reduced gradually to a pulp by the molar teeth. 

 It is manifest, however, that when the herbage is dry and its 

 fruit hard, a much greater amount of mastication will be neces- 

 sary than when it is soft and succulent, and when the fruit is 

 still unripe and humid. Moreover, it is obvious that when the 

 food is of this dry description, particularly if the season be 

 still warm, a much larger amount of drink will be requisite 

 than when the food abounds in humidity. It should be re- 

 marked, also, that when the fruit of grasses or of leguminous 

 plants is eaten as it exists in the wild state, a large proportion 

 of the straw must be consumed at the same time ; so that dry 

 aliment, like plain oats or plain beans by themselves, never be- 

 comes the food of the horse in the wild state. 



These few facts, bearing reference for the moment not to 

 the intrinsic nutritiousness of the alimentary articles, of which 

 elsewhere, but to their merely greater or less fitness for masti- 

 cation, should not be lost sight of in adjusting the mixture of 

 his food in the domesticated state. The purpose of the 

 changes in the mouth is to reduce the aliment to a soft pulp 

 preparatory to the further transmutation which is to go on in 

 the stomach. In so far as the food naturally supplied is con- 

 cerned, the teeth and salivary apparatus are excellently adapted 

 to the end intended ; but it is manifest that such hard articles 

 of food as unmingled oats or unmingled beans never constitute 

 the natural food of the horse. There is danger, then, when 

 the horse is put on either of these two forms of food without 

 admixture with some less hard food, that the process of mas- 

 tication will be imperfectly performed, and the oats or beans 

 swallowed in a state less fit for digestion in the stomach, and 

 therefore liable to give rise to disorder in the inferior part of 

 the alimentary canal. The appearance of the dung sufficiently 

 proves that oats and beans, when given alone, are imperfectly 



