FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. 53 



It does not appear that in the time of our author it was, to 

 judge from his silence, the practice to castrate horses. It 

 became common fifty years or less later. He tells us, more- 

 over, that it is less loss for a man that his calf should die 

 than that his lamb should. But the loss of the foal is the 

 greatest of all. 



The husbandman should never, except in the case of very 

 hilly pasture, which may be left for sheep, have any kind of 

 animal alone on the ground. The reason is that not one of 

 them by itself will eat the pasture evenly. Horses and cattle 

 should therefore be always put together. Sheep are the closest 

 and most even feeders. You may put in good pasture and on 

 flat ground a hundred cattle, twenty horses, and a hundred 

 sheep together. If the pasture be upland, put more sheep. 

 Milch cows should not be put into rich pasture, or they are apt 

 to become barren, and if they get fat, run much more risk when 

 they drop their calves. But beasts, horses, and sheep, must not 

 be foddered together in winter, for cattle are apt in such 

 a case to gore both horses and sheep. Animals fed with winter 

 fodder should, in order to prevent waste, be supplied in 

 standing crutches. 



A horse-breeder in Fitzherbert's time had, it seems, studied 

 the points of the animal carefully, for this author tells us that 

 the animal should have fifty-four properties, two of a man, two of 

 a bauson or badger, four of a lion, nine of an ox, nine of a hare, 

 nine of a fox, nine of an ass, and ten of a woman. On the last 

 of these properties, Fitzherbert, though ordinarily grave and 

 pious, indulges in a little coarse pleasantry. There are, perhaps, 

 as many faults, he adds, but if he told them he should break his 

 promise that he made at Grumbald Bridge the first time he 

 went to Ripon to buy colts. He concludes his account of 

 horses with an enumeration of the diseases to which they are 

 liable. The names and the nature of these ' soraunce ' are 

 familiar to the modern farrier, though he speaks of glanders as 

 a curable disease. 



The horse-dealer of Fitzherbert's day was as dangerous a 



