PRACTICAL TESTS. 161 



the hunting season, five quarterns of oats per day 

 a horse, with occasionally a few beans, is as much 

 as you will get them to eat on an average of seven 

 consecutive months. 



To show the difference between practically 

 knowing the expenses of a stable, and listening to 

 being told by interested persons what they "must 

 be, at least" I will just take a pair of sixteen-hands 

 carriage-horses, and see what their expense, not 

 " must be," but should be ; and here I show no 

 presumption in saying I care not what all the 

 grooms or coachmen in London may say I know 

 I am right : not from any talent, ingenuity, or 

 peculiar mode of treatment; not reasoning upon 

 even the best theoretical principles, but on the 

 broad, plain, homely facts of experience and prac- 

 tice that not arising from having had the ma- 

 nagement of any one or two classes of horses, or 

 those under one or two different situations or cir- 

 cumstances, but from having had the direction of 

 all sorts of race-horses, hunters, carriage-horses, 

 hacks, machineers, and cart-horses, and at one 

 period all at the same time ; what I say, therefore, 

 on the subject reflects about as much credit on me 

 in point of intellect as we should attach to the 

 man who had been all his life emptying coal-wag- 

 gons telling us how many sacks went to the chal- 

 dron, and the chance of our being in error would 

 be about equal. 



M 



