40 DOlilES'nC AJN'IMALS. 



quire more. "With reference to the flow of the saliva, without entering 

 upon the question how far it is necessary to assist digestion, no animal 

 can swallow its food without a sufficiency of saliva to assist the act of 

 deglutition; and it is not recommended to reduce the oats to flour, but 

 merely to bruise them. Many persons fancy that by giving oats in 

 small quantities and spreading them thinly over the manger the horses 

 will be induced to masticate them. Those who have watched their 

 operations will find that a greedy-feeding horse will drive his corn up 

 into a heap, and collect with his lips as much as he thinks proper for a 

 mouthful. 



Little if any advantage arises from cutting hay into chaff, especially 

 for the most valuable kind of horses. It is done in cart stables to pre- 

 vent waste, which is often enormous in those departments where horses 

 are permitted to pull the hay out of their racks and tread it underfoot. 



The state of perfection to w^hich the higher classes of the horse have 

 been brought in this country, is attributable to the great attention de- 

 voted during a long period of time to the selection of the best descrip 

 tions for the purpose of perpetuating the species ; the treatment they 

 have received under the influence of a propitious climate, and the nature 

 of the food Avith which they have been supplied ; greater improvements 

 are capable of being realized by judicious management. 



Value of Different Kinds of Food. — Professor Playfeir, who has made 

 experiments on the quantity of nutritious matter contained in different 

 kinds of food supplied to animals, found that in one hundred lbs. of 

 oats, eleven lbs. represent the quantity of ghiten wherewith flesh is 

 formed, and that an equal weight of hay aftords eight lbs. of similar 

 substance. Both hay and oats contain about sixty-eight per cent, of 

 unazotized matter identical with fat, of which it must be observed a vast 

 portion passes off from the animal without being deposited. By this 

 calculation, it appears that if a horse consumes daily four feeds of oats 

 and ten lbs. of hay, the nutriment which he derives will be equivalent 

 to about one lb. eleven oz. of muscle, and thirteen and a half lbs. of su- 

 perfluous matter, which, exclusively of water, nearly approximates the 

 exhaustion of the system by perspiration and the various evacuations. 



Oats have been selected as that portion of the food which is to afford 

 the principal nourishment. They contain seven hundred and forty- 

 three parts out of a thousand of the nutritive matter. They should be 

 about or somewhat less than a year old— heavy, dry and sweet. New 

 oats will weigh ten or fii'teen per cent, more than old ones, but the dif- 

 ference consists principally in watery matter, which is gradually evapo- 

 rated. New oats are not so readily ground down by the teeth as old 

 ones. They form a more glutinous mass, difficult to digest, and when 

 eaten in considerable quantities are apt to occasion colic, or even stag- 

 gers. 



Barley is a common food of the horse on various parts of the Conti- 

 nent, and, until the introduction of the oat, seems to have constituted 

 almost his only food. It is more nutritious than oats, containing nine 

 hundred and twenty parts of nutritive matter in every thousand. There 

 seems, however, to be something necessary besides a great proportion 

 of nutritive matter, in order to render any substance strengthening, 



