LITTER. 23 



the animals delicate. Swelled legs maybe frequently 

 reduced to their proper natural size by taking away 

 the litter only ; which, in some stables where ignorant 

 grooms and farriers govern, would be a great saving 

 of bleeding and physic, besides straw. I have seen, 

 by repeated experiments, legs swell and unswell, by 

 leaving litter, or taking it away, like mercury in a 

 weather glass.' It has also been found in the army 

 that the troopers' horses, which are not bedded 

 down during the day, never suffer so much from 

 corns, contractions, thrush, and grease as the officer's 

 chargers do, which have straw to stand upon when- 

 ever they are in the stable. 



Some owners, with a view to economy, substitute 

 sawdust for the straw, and they leave it for weeks 

 without changing it. This is a still greater mistake ; 

 it gets saturated with acids and alkalies, and is most 

 injurious to the feet as well as to the general health 

 of the animals. Veterinary surgeons assign, as one 

 of the causes of cough, ' rank bedding.' It is a fre- 

 quent source of seedy toe ; yet, not many weeks 

 since, a groom to whom this remark was made 

 laughed it to scorn, saying that it was the best 

 possible preventive to the disease, and was, moreover, 

 the very best cure for it in a horse already affected 

 with it ; and, he added, the older and more rotten 

 the sawdust the more effective. His horse did have 

 seedy toe shortly after this, and the veterinary had 

 to be called in. He, of course, had all this rotten 

 muck immediately removed. The use of sawdust is 

 no economy at all, when considered from the right 



