The Horse, as Comrade and Friend 



better than lump sugar. It is portable, 

 occupies little room, and all horses become 

 passionately fond of it. 



Now it is a tradition of the old time British 

 groom, held by many with the most perti- 

 nacious obstinacy, that sugar of any kind is 

 utterly disruptive of the moral and material 

 welfare of the horse — ^that it induces crib- 

 biting, wind-sucking, bladder trouble, and 

 every evil under the sun. The tradition has 

 been handed down, sacrosanct and incon- 

 trovertible, from father to son, without the 

 least suspicion that it is really the most 

 ridiculous rot. The British stud groom of 

 the highest variety, the autocrat of a great 

 racing stable or stud, would fall down in- 

 stantly in the worst kind of fit, if it were sug- 

 gested to him even by his Owner — usually a 

 personage of quite minor consideration in the 

 stables — that the moderate use of sugar would 

 help to molUfy the tempers of some of those 

 man-eaters which the great man produces 

 with such facihty. He knows nothing of the 

 chemical food-value of sugar, or of its work- 

 sustaining and recuperative powers under 

 great stress of action, but condemns it utterly, 

 because that still more conservative and 

 ignorant person, his father, did so before him. 

 But those who have been in the tropics know 

 better. In the West Indies, and in those 

 parts of Central and South America where 



86 



