HARD MEAT VERSUS GRASS iii 



which so visibly affects him ! Were a man told that 

 he must write a book, or build a house, in three months, 

 would he do either so well as if he had a longer period 

 allowed him to arrange and consider the subject for 

 the one, or to select and season the materials for the 

 other ? This applies still more powerfully to the 

 horse, inasmuch as all operations of nature require 

 a stated time. 



As I was returning home from inspecting my neigh- 

 bour's hunters, I was amused as well as instructed 

 by the following conversation, which took place 

 between one of his tenants (a farmer) and myself : — 



" Mr 's horses," said I, " look badly." " Why, 



yes," said the farmer ; "I told the 'Squire so some 

 time back ; but I don't hold with the way in which 

 some of you gentlemen keep your hunters. You keep 

 them in a warm stable, full of good corn, for eight 

 months in the year, and then turn them out to shift for 

 themselves the other four. Now," added he, " this is 

 not the way I like to keep my cart horses. I like to 

 keep them pretty well all the year around ; for if they 

 are kept up and down (verbatim), there is sure to be 

 something the matter with them — grease, or some 

 humours." These were precisely his words, and I 

 registered them carefully in my recollection ; for 

 nothing can be more true than that the greatest evils 

 arise to horses from subjecting them to extremes of 

 food, as also of heat and cold. Philosophers tell us that 

 if this globe were to experience, in the space of one year, 

 the heat of the torrid and the cold of the frigid zones — 

 which it undoubtedly would do were the elliptic to 



