HARD MEAT VERSUS GRASS 113 



the most trying period to the constitution arrives — 

 namely, August or September, when hot days are 

 succeeded by chilHng fogs at night — yet I think we 

 may venture to assume that those horses must be 

 foaled for the purpose, and made of more than common 

 materials, which could submit with impunity to having 

 their saddles and bridles taken off as soon as they 

 come home, and turned out into a field to roll themselves 

 in the dirt, and fill their empty and debilitated stomachs 

 with cold spring water. 



Although " among a multitude of proofs one does 

 the business," and one would satisfy me as well as 

 a hundred, yet, having others to convince, I thought I 

 would submit the propriety of turning hunters out 

 to grass for the summer to one more test ; so, the morn- 

 ing after I had seen my neighbour's horses, I got upon 

 my hack, and rode to a park some miles distant, where 

 I knew some hunters were turned out, and where they 

 were charged five shillings a week for their keep, from 

 the superior character of the pasture. Had I enter- 

 tained any doubts, however trifling, on the disadvan- 

 tages of a summer's run, my visit to this park 

 would have dissipated them all : but I had here a 

 particularly favourable opportunity of selecting one 

 subject out of several that I met with, either of which 

 would have been sufficient with which to illustrate 

 the solidity of my argument ; and this was a chestnut 

 mare, the property of a gentleman who had sent her 

 twenty miles to run in this park. Now it so happened, 

 that, as I was riding along the turnpike road, the second 

 week in May, I met this mare on her road to this park. 



