VENTILATION OF STABLES. 45 



this is not a necessary consequence. Air may be cold and 

 at the same time quite unfit for breathing, or it may be hot 

 and yet perfectly free from impurity. There may be stables 

 in which the atmosphere is perniciously hot ; but I do not 

 think I have ever seen them. I have not been able to trace 

 a disease arising from warm or hot stabling. [This is a great 

 error, for nothing is more easily susceptible of proof, than that 

 horses housed in very warm stables are much more liable to 

 take cold when out in a raw wind or during the winter sea- 

 son, than those kept in a lower atmosphere. Dangerous in- 

 flammatory complaints are also more likely to follow colds 

 take by horses when too warmly stabled or clothed .] But every 

 year affords innumerable examples of what mischief can be 

 done by a foul stable. Of course these foul stables are al- 

 ways hot ; but, in my belief, it is the impure, not the heated 

 air, from which disease arises. Many stables remarkably 

 warm are remarkably healthy. It is important to make this 

 distinction. The horse can be kept warm without being 

 poisoned with foul air. And, among stablemen, it is so well 

 known that warmth is congenial to the horse, that it improves 

 his appearance, and gives him greater vigor, that it is per- 

 fectly useless to offer any opposition to it. Practice will al- 

 ways prevail over theory. We ought not to oppose warmth, 

 but the means by which warmth is given. The horse should 

 be kept comfortably warm, but he must have pure air. A 

 cold stable is not so dangerous as a foul one. 



Then there are many people who are indifferent about ven- 

 tilation. They dislike trouble ; they can suffer much, but 

 they can do nothing. They will bear all the evils, all the 

 loss, and all the vexations of a bad stable, rather than make 

 any effort to improve it. If an offer were made to ventilate 

 their stables, without cost and without trouble, they would 

 permit it to be done. When advised, for the sake of their 

 ixorses, to get the stables properly aired, one will reply, " Ah, 

 it is very true what you say, but you may see the thing can 

 not be done !" 



Stables are often constructed in such a manner that it is 

 very difficult to ventilate them. The process may be both 

 troublesome and expensive ; there ought to be some good 

 reason for suffering the one and incurring the other. Opposi- 

 tion has been excited by magnifying the evils of a close 

 stable ; but, divested of alJ xaggeration, it will be seen that 

 they are not insignificant. 



