DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



EDITED BY JONATHAN PERIAM, AUTHOR OP THE AMERICAN CYCLOPEDIA OF 



LIVE STOCK; HOME AND FARM MANDAL; AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIA 



OP AGRICULTURE ; FARMERS' STOCK BOOK, ETC. 



THE HORSE. 



Of all the domestic animals, the horse is the chief, and stands 

 uearest to man, both as regards purposes of utility and pleasure. It 

 is the indispensable coadjutor of man in every sphere of labor, and 

 is essential to almost all nis undertakings. Whether in tilling the 

 soil, gathering the harvest, marketing the produce, or going to and 

 fro either for pleasure or profit, the horse is man's most useful and 

 most familiar friend. It has been said with a good deal of truth 

 that you may gather the character of a man from the appearance of 

 his horse. If he be a man of prudence and of proper pride, he will 

 have the best horse for his purpose his means will allow; if he be 

 just, generous and humane, the horse will show by the marks of good 

 treatment and good feeding, that his services and his value are 

 appreciated. 



Perhaps there is no other direction in which men are custom- 

 arily so wasteful of their resources as in the treatment of their 

 horses. These are treated too often as if the only obligation they 

 entailed upon their owners was that of feed and shelter, and as if, 

 instead or possessing an anatomy of flesh and blood, they were 

 endowed with frames of iron and lungs and arterial structures of 

 leather. Under the ordinary treatment the horse is deprived fully 

 on an average of one-half the natural term of his existence, and is 

 a useless hulk at ten or twelve years of age, when by careful atten- 

 tion to his physical needs, he would be a sound and serviceable 

 animal at twenty. 



How to Tell the Age of the Horse The age of the 

 horse is of the utmost consequence to the intending purchaser, be- 

 cause upon that depends the value of the investment you make in 



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