544 PHYSIOLOGY AT THE FARM. 



half-peck of oats cannot be put down as costing less than six 

 pounds a-year ; and thus, at five years of age, the colt will 

 have cost thirty pounds more than if he had been fed on hay 

 and grass alone. Now, between a race-horse reared on corn 

 and another confined to hay and grass, the difference in value 

 would be 1000 per cent ; and in first-class hunters, though 

 not so great as this, it would be very considerable. But 

 among inferior horses, on the average, it would scarcely reach 

 the sum I have named as the prime cost of the oats ; and 

 therefore, though in the depth of winter a quartern or half a 

 peck is generally given with a little bran, yet when there is 

 good grass this is neither necessary nor is it economical." ' 



Here, then, a problem presents itself, the solution of which 

 is of much importance to the farmer who breeds horses 

 namely, what grasses or other kinds of cheap food will best 

 supply the place of oats during the growth of the young horse. 

 It may be taken as an established conclusion, that all articles 

 of food allowed to be generally nutritious contain enough of 

 the proximate chemical principles to supply the blood of the 

 foal with its due proportion of fibrine, albumen, hsemato-glob- 

 uline, and the like ; and if the food, when in due abundance, 

 be at any time insufficient to insure the perfect progressive 

 development of the frame, the deficiency must arise from an 

 insufficiency in mineral materials, more particularly of those 

 requisite for the growth of such hard tissues as the bones and 

 cartilages namely, the phosphate of lime, the carbonate of 

 lime, and the phosphate of magnesia. 



It can hardly be owing to a deficiency in the supply of lime 

 or of magnesia in the forage or artificial grasses that they do 

 not equally promote the development of the body of the foal 

 as that diet into which oats enter, for these generally contain 

 a larger proportion both of lime and of magnesia than the 

 * Stonehenge, ' The Horse in the Stable and the Field,' p. 162. 



