52 STABLE ECONOMY. 



are other agents which vigilantly guard against excessive 

 multiplication. The contamination of the air may be the last and 

 most potent resource. But though rarely, or it may be never, 

 occurring in the wilderness, the event is frequent in domesti- 

 city. The number of horses confined together even in the 

 largest and most crowded stable, bears no proportion to the 

 multitudes which compose a wild drove ; yet, considered in 

 relation to the small quantity of air by which they are sur- 

 rounded, the number is excessive. The difference between 

 the number of the horses and the quantity of air, is greater 

 than it is ever known to be among wild horses. Hence, 

 stabling has introduced a disease that falls very rarely, per- 

 haps not at all, upon the untamed portion of the species. I 

 allude to glanders. This disease has never been seen among 

 wild horses, and it is hardly known where the European mode 

 of stabling has not been tried. That it can be produced by 

 bad air, or by the want of pure air, is generally admitted. " In 

 the expedition to Quiberon, the horses had not been long on 

 board the transports when it became necessary to shut down 

 the hatchways (we believe for a few hours only) ; the con- 

 sequence of this was that some of them were suffocated, and 

 all the rest were disembarked either glandered or farcied."* 



[We have no doubt that these horses were diseased when 

 shipped, and that the confinement was merely the occasion of 

 a quicker development of the disease.] 



Stables are never so perfectly close as to suffocate the 

 horses, and they are very rarely so close as to be the sole 

 cause of glanders or farcy. When these diseases appear in 

 a stable, bad air may possibly be the only cause ; but in general 

 the air is assisted by excessive work, or bad food, or by both. 

 Setting these destructive diseases out of the question, chronic 

 cough, blindness, and common colds, form the principal evils 

 of a stable in which the air is mingled with effluvia arising 

 from the dung and the urine. And loss of vigor, imperfect 

 health, and imperfect strength, are, in ordinary cases, the 

 principal consequences of breathing air which is deficient in 

 oxygen. Where the air is still more impure, and still more 

 deficient, the evils are more numerous, and more serious. 



When a stable is opened in the morning, if the walls or the 

 woodwork be moist and perspiring, the stable is too close, 

 if the air irritates the eyes and the nostrils, the stable is dirty 

 AS well as close. If the air is not comfortably warm, the 

 stable is too open. 



* Percivall's Lectures, vol. iii., p. 405. 



