TRANSITION FROM NATURE TO DOMESTICITY. 



The Air an animal respires is to be regarded in reference 

 to its temperature and to its purity, its dryness or humidity. 

 By nature the horse appears especially to require not only 

 air that is cooling and refreshings but such as is pure and 

 fully fitted for the purposes of respiration : he is an animal 

 of speed ; his speed depends on his bodily strength ; and 

 the endurance of that strength is dependent on his wind ; 

 it therefore becomes necessary not only that he should be 

 furnished with a capacious and complete respiratory appa- 

 ratus^ but that the air he respires should be of that descrip- 

 tion best calculated to fulfil the ends of respiration. This 

 he finds in the open field ; but does he meet with it likewise 

 in the stable ? No ! There he encounters an atmosphere 

 confined within certain limits, and, fr^m that circumstance 

 alone, of a temperature higher than the one he has quitted : 

 in addition to which it becomes heated even from his own 

 breath and body, as well as from those of other horses who 

 may stand with him : worse than this, however, its oxygenous 

 or vivifying principle becomes more or less consumed by 

 the numbers who respire it ; and, worse than all, it becomes 

 impregnated with effluvia exhaled from the dung and the 

 urine. The evils of this change were not long concealed 

 from the penetrative mind of Professor Coleman, and he 

 accordingly adopted measures to remedy them ; a step the 

 most beneficial, and therefore the most praiseworthy he or 

 any other man ever took to improve the domestic condition 

 of the horse. It is almost unnecessary to add that I allude 

 to the ventilation of the cavalry stables. I have now served 

 twenty years in the army, and every one of those years has 

 added to my conviction of the truth of what I am at this 

 moment endeavouring to inculcate. 



Food furnishes less cause for complaint. The hay we 

 give in the stable is the same as the grass the animal eats 

 in the field, only one is in a dry and more or less fermented 



