404 WARWICKSHIRE HUNT. 



ON THE COATS OF HORSES. 



BY BRUSH. 



No fading beauty desirous of retaining the conquests slie had made, 

 ever played more vagaries witli her complexion, than Ave of the present 

 day do with the coats of our horses. One shaves, another clips, and a 

 third singes. Each system has its advocates ; and we often meet with 

 an individual who praises the one he has adopted, because it appears 

 to have succeeded with his own particular horse. I believe that each 

 of these systems has a peculiar merit, and that neither is exclusively 

 right. I have heard singeing ridiculed, because it would not shear off 

 a coat which rivalled in thickness a sheep's fleece. Again, clipping is 

 laughed at as a tedious manner of doing in several days what a flame 

 would accomplish in as many hours. And shaving is condemned as 

 the most tiresome of all. All this sAveeping condemnation is wrong, 

 and arises from ignorance of the subject. If you take your horse up 

 in August, with a short coat, you may keep it so by singeing him 

 now and then ; or if you purchase a horse with a tolerable coat, this 

 is the best preventative against its getting worse ; but if you happen 

 to have in November an animal with a thick and long coat, singeing 

 will have about as much effect on it as a shower of rain has on a duck's 

 back; this is a case that nothing will reach but the scissors. Again, 

 there are coats so tough, wiry, and greasy, as to defy scissors, and 

 will yield to nothing but the razor. Before you have recourse to either 

 of these schemes consider the animal, recollecting that the merit of 

 each system depends entirely on the nature of the coat on which you 

 operate. If you find that singeing is the best adapted to your particu- 

 lar case, there is a choice of ingredients for the purpose ; either spirits 

 of wine and turpentine, or naphtha by itself; the latter is but half the 

 price of the former, and as it is equally efficacious, its cheapness should 

 give it our preference. Whilst on the subject of coats, I recollect that 

 many years since, being requested by a friend to accompany him to a 

 dealer's in Oxfordshire to assist him in selecting a horse ; just as we 

 arrived at the place, I asked him what kind of a horse he wanted? He 

 replied, one with such a coat that when he rode through a town each 

 person should point to him and say, there goes a beautiful horse. I 

 laughed heartily at the idea at the time. But experience has taught 

 me that what lie required was really of great consequence ; and all our 

 present schemes of clipping, singeing, and shaving are further confir- 

 mations of the importance of a good coat. 



