ADVANTAGES OF CLIPPING 229 



decided advantage, during the last season, with the 

 Cheshire, Sir Richard Puleston's, and Sir Thomas 

 Stanley's fox-hounds, as well as with the Chester 

 harriers. Experience and observation are, in this 

 matter, worth a bushel of a 'priori reasoning ; but 

 scientific argument and rational explanation are not 

 wanting to aid and enforce the practice of dipping. 

 In the first place and to begin with the most trifling 

 reason — the horse is a pound lighter ; and the coat 

 affording little resistance to the brush, your groom is 

 not half so soon fatigued in dressing, and lays double 

 strength upon the surface. This causes a greater 

 determination to the extreme vessels, and the in- 

 sensible perspiration is proportionably increased. 

 We invariably find a connexion between the action 

 of the skin and that of the intestines ; and this is 

 sufficiently evident in a well groomed horse ; the 

 lacteals of the bowels seem to have a corresponding 

 action communicated to them — they absorb and 

 select the pabulum of the blood with increased vigour 

 — the secreting vessels of the stomach furnish the 

 gastric solvent more abundantly — the liver more 

 readily acts, and separates those vitiated parts which 

 have fulfilled their duties in the circulation, and 

 require to be thrown out of the system, but in their 

 transit, in the form of bile, perform other important 

 uses, in stimulating the intestines to that regular 

 peristaltic motion which secures a change of particles 

 to the vessels which absorb the nourishment for the 

 blood. But the abdominal viscera do not alone 

 benefit by the more intimate friction which is admitted 



