HORSE-BACK RIDING. 6i 



fibrin ; it is it also which burns the hydro-carbonated 

 saccharine and fatty matters of the blood, maintaining 

 the animalhe at, engendering nervous action, and caus- 

 ing movement. But when it has furnished all these 

 oxidations, Avhere it is replaced in the blood by the 

 products of combustion which dissolve themselves in 

 the serum, taking the natural forms — water, azote, or 

 in the form of salts— carbonates, the globules be- 

 come dark red in color, and wither until they come in 

 contact with the air in the lungs, when they seem to 

 live again by charging themselves with oxygen. 



We can see the importance of these red globules of 

 the blood ; they are the soul of nutrition, since they 

 engender the fibrin, which is the element of a great 

 number of the tissues, and store up the oxygen, which 

 is the agent of all combustions. In a state of health, 

 their number is nearly uniform, but under certain 

 morbid influences it considerably diminishes ; they 

 are destroyed and not renewed. Then nutrition is 

 insufificient. But of these two phenomena, which is 

 cause or which is effect, whether the failure Is in the 

 nutrition or in the globules, we cannot tell ; they are 

 sure to accompany each other. 



When we see the muscular contractions caused by 

 horse-back exercise give the impulse to the circu- 

 latory phenomena, and thence to the respiratory and 

 digestive ; when we see the chest expand and inspire 

 two litres of air instead of one half of one, the in- 

 creased amount of food, the development of the mus- 



