456 GENERAL MANAGEMENT 



endeavours to break into a sharp trot or canter, the rider or driver may be 

 assured that others before him have fruitlessly endeavoured to remedy the 

 nuisance. 



If the stumbler has the foot kept as short and the toe pared as close as safety 

 will permit, and the shoe is rounded at the toe, or has that shape given to it 

 which it naturally acquires in a fortnight from the peculiar action of such a horse, 

 the animal may not stumble quite so much ; or if the disease which produced the 

 habit can be alleviated, some trifling good may be done, but in almost every 

 case a stumbler should be got rid of, or put to slow and heavy work. If the 

 latter alternative is adopted, he may trip as much as he pleases, for the weight 

 of the load and the motion of the other horses will keep him upon his legs. 



WEAVING. 



This consists in a motion of the head, neck, and body, from side to side, like 

 the shuttle of a weaver passing through the web, and hence the name which is 

 given to this peculiar and incessant and unpleasant action. It indicates an im- 

 patient, irritable temper, and a dislike to the confinement of the stable. A 

 horse that is thus incessantly on the fret will seldom carry flesh, or be safe to 

 ride or drive. There is no cure for it, but the close tying up of the animal, or 

 at least allowing him but one loose rein, except at feeding-time. 





CHAPTER XXIV. 

 THE GENERAL MANAGEMENT OF THE HORSE. 



THIS is a most important part of our subject, even as it regards the farmer, 

 although there are comparatively few glaring errors in the treatment of the 

 agricultural horse : but it comes more especially home to the gentleman, who 

 is too often and too implicitly under the guidance of an idle, and ignorant, and 

 designing groom. 



We will arrange the most important points of general management under 

 the following heads : 



AIR. 



The breathing of pure air is necessary to the existence and the health of 

 man and beast. It is comparatively lately that this has been admitted even in 

 the management of our best stables. They have been close and hot and foul, 

 instead of airy and cool and wholesome. The effect of several horses being shut 

 up in the same stable is completely to empoison the air ; and yet, even in the 

 present day, there are too many who carefully close every aperture by which 

 n breath of fresh air can by possibility gain admission. In effecting this, even 

 the key-hole and the threshold are not forgotten. What, of necessity, must be 

 the consequence of this ? Why ! if one thought is bestowed on the new and 

 dangerous character that the air is assuming, it will be too evident that sore 

 throat, and swelled legs, and bad eyes, and inflamed lungs, and mange, and 

 grease, and glanders, will scarcely ever be long out of that stable. 



Let this be considered in another point of view. The horse stands twenty or 

 two-and-twenty hours in this unnatural vapour bath, and then he is suddenly 

 stripped of all his clothing, he is led into the open air, and there he is kept a 



