132 PUTTING INTO CONDITION. 



and boiled for twenty minutes, with one map 

 of dry ground gram, and one of sliced carrots 

 or turnips afterwards added, make an excellent 

 evening's feed, and one which is very refreshing 

 after a long day's hunt.* This kind of supper, 

 however, is often refused, unless the horse has 

 been a little habituated to it, or if the cooking- 

 pot it was boiled in was the least greasy or 

 dirty, or perhaps from dislike to one of the 

 articles. Any change of diet, anything new, 

 must always be introduced by little and little, 



* Coltee, oomd, moong, and methee are the grains for 

 boiling, and sometimes barley also. Coltee reqiiires more 

 boiling than either of the other three, but none of these should 

 ever be given raw. Bajree and mhut are not so good for boil- 

 ing ; they are better in their natural state, and ground gram 

 also, unless particularly hard, or the horse sick. Bajree and 

 mhut are always mixed, as bajree alone is too heating ; and 

 mhut alone gives the gripes, especially when it is mixed with 

 rats' dung. 



Wheat is the most nutritious of all grain, but at the same 

 time the most liable to disagree. The strongest-stomached 

 horse could not bear a change to an entire wheat diet under four 

 or five months, and then it is very unwholesome. Barley is 

 the next most nutritious grain, then oats, then peas, and lastly, 

 beans. It appears singular that beans, which in England are 

 deemed absolutely requisite to a horse at hard work (not to 

 train on), and which are known to put on the hardest flesh, 

 should contain less nutriment than the other grain; and it 

 appears equally singular that lucern, the value of which we all 

 know in India in fattening a horse, should be the least nutri- 

 tious of all the grasses ; but so it is. 



