246 THE CONDITION OF HUNTERS 



in which there was a running stream. No. 3 was in a 

 covered building, twelve yards long by six wide, one 

 half littered down, and the other half a well-paved 

 brick floor, but no other outlet. No. 4 was in a box, 

 eighteen feet by eighteen, kept quite dark to keep 

 out the flies, which terrified him to an uncommon 

 degree. This horse was turned out into a small 

 paddock forty yards square, about six times in the 

 course of the summer, after the sun was set, but no 

 fence we could make would confine him there. No. 5 

 was fired, and stood in a stall all day, but put into 

 the paddock in the cool of the evening and very early 

 in the morning. No. 6 was kept in an airy box, but, 

 being vicious, was not out in the paddock so often 

 as I wished her to be. Each horse had three quarterns 

 of oats per day, and three of them had a single handful 

 of beans in each feed. Each horse also stood two 

 hours every day in a clay-box. The clay-box is a 

 covered building, sixteen feet by twelve, on the floor 

 of which a waggon load of clay was spread, and about 

 every third morning two or three buckets of water 

 were thrown over it. I consider this a most essential 

 benefit to horses' feet, increased, no doubt, by their 

 walking a certain distance every day barefoot, with 

 their soles thinly pared and their frogs well let down 

 on the ground. On the eighteenth of July they each 

 had one other mild dose of physic ; and in the month 

 of August each horse ate half a pound of antimony 

 — an ounce a day for eight successive days.^ This 



* A very sporting character in the North of England wrote to me 

 last year to ask me whether I did not think the quantity of antimony 



