96 THE CONDITION OF HUNTERS 



This authority is sufficient to enforce attention to 

 the golden rule to which I have just alluded. 



A stint in the allowance of hay must be strictly 

 enforced if we wish to preserve our horses to a good 

 old age. We have heard of the scelera aquarum as 

 applied to the human species, although sportsmen 

 are not apt to be afflicted by such evils ; but the 

 mischief arising from an improper use of hay, I take 

 to be incalculable. In the stables of the fast coaches 

 this has been proved almost to demonstration. These 

 horses are only allowed half a truss each for the seven 

 days, and a broken-winded horse is now scarcely 

 heard of among them. I have taken some pains to 

 ascertain this fact by my own personal inquiries. 

 One proprietor, who had nearly fifty horses at work 

 — many of which were in as fast coaches as any that 

 travelled the road — assured me, lately, that he had 

 not one broken-winded horse in his yard ; whereas, 

 before he stinted them in their hay, he generally had 

 one in five in that state. A further proof of the good 

 effect of this sumptuary law in the stable is, that the 

 horse which lives chiefly upon corn requires less water 

 than one whose belly is distended with hay ; and it 

 must make no small difference to a horse whether he 

 be taken from an empty or a full rack, when put to a 

 coach that starts off, and continues to run, at the quick 

 rate of eleven or twelve miles in the hour. 



Having, as before observed, had a good deal to do 

 with private training, I may be allowed to say that 

 I consider the present system of feeding the race- 

 horse to be very nearly applicable to that of feeding 



