128 AIR. 



be unsightly; and warm clothing, even in a cool stable, will, 

 with plenty of careful and faithful grooming, keep the hoir suf- 

 ficiently smooth and glossy to satisfy the most fastidious. The 

 over-heated air of a close stable dispenses with the necessity of 

 this grooming, and therefore the idle attendant unscrupulously 

 sacrifices the health and safety of the horse. 



If the stable is close, the air will not only be hot, but foul. 

 The breathing of every animal contaminates it ; and when, in the 

 course of the night, with every aperture stopped, it passes again 

 and again through the lungs, the blood cannot undergo its proper 

 and healthy change ; digestion will not be so perfectly performed, 

 and all the functions of life are injured. Let the owner of a 

 valuable horse think of his passing twenty or twenty-two out of 

 the twenty-four hours in this debilitating atmosphere. Nature 

 does wonders in enabling every animal to accommodate itself 

 to the situation in which it is placed, and the horse that lives 

 in the stable-oven suffers less from it than would scarcely be 

 deemed possible ; but he does not, and cannot, possess the 

 power and hardihood which he would acquire under other cir- 

 cumstances. 



The air of the improperly closed and heated stable is still 

 further contaminated by the urine and dung, which rapidly fer- 

 ment there, and give out stimulating and unwholesome odors. 

 When one first enters an ill-managed stable, and especially early 

 in the morning, he is annoyed, not only by the heat of the con- 

 fined air, but by a pungent smell, resembling hartshorn ; what sur- 

 prise, then, need be excited at the inflammation of the eyes, and 

 the chronic cougli, and the disease of the lungs, by which the 

 animal, which has been all night shut up in this vitiated atmos- 

 phere, is often attacked ; or if glanders and farcy should occa- 



