i6o THE CONDITION OF HUNTERS 



August and September are the usual months when 

 horses which have lived well begin to cast off their 

 summer coats ; and it is, or at least it ought to 

 be, the period when those used for the purpose of 

 hunting have gone through their course of physic. 

 It is, however, too often the season in which injury 

 is done to the coat of a hunter, which he does not 

 get the better of till Christmas is past. I have before 

 observed that no horse, or at any rate not more than 

 one in a hundred, wiU be in blooming condition until 

 he has (besides his physic) gone through a course of 

 alteratives to sweeten and correct the acrimony of 

 his blood. Now the difficulty is to give them this 

 medicine, and to give him his work also, without 

 injuring, or what in the stable is called " setting," 

 his coat. Many persons, on this account, postpone 

 sweating their hunters until the moulting season 

 has gone by ; but with proper treatment this pre- 

 caution is not necessary, and the delay is fatal to the 

 condition of their horses. The secret here merely 

 consists in keeping them warm, particularly on the 

 days they sweat, and thus avoiding a sudden con- 

 striction of the pores — more than usually susceptible 

 by the diaphoretic properties of the medicine they are 

 taking. Indeed I must go one step further, and assert, 

 that if, at this trying season, a horse is exposed to a 

 stream of cold air, after having had his blood vessels 

 extended by exercise, and his skin relaxed by medicine, 

 the bloom wiU be taken off him as effectually as if 

 he had been turned out into a straw-yard for a week. 

 The blush on the human face is scarcely more tran- 



