PASTURING. 159 



Exposure to hot weather is not so pernicious, although it 

 always produces pain, if the horse be turned out in the middle 

 of summer. For a while he is fevered all day and loses flesh ; 

 but he soon recovers. The parts that are most apt to suffer 

 are the brain and the eyes. Staggers, that is, an affection of 

 the brain, is not common, and the eyes never suffer permanent 

 mischief. They are inflamed by the flies, but the brain is in- 

 jured, partly by the heat, and partly by the pendent position 

 of the head. 



Flies. The horse is persecuted by at least three kinds of 

 flies. One, the common horse-fly, settles on his ears and dif- 

 ferent parts of his body, tickling and teazing him. Another is 

 a large fly, termed the gad-fly ; it is a blood-sucker, bites pretty 

 smartly, and irritates some tender-skinned horses*' almost to 

 madness, forcing them sometimes to rush into the water to 

 escape their attacks. Another fly is a small insect, whose name 

 is unknown, which lives in the blood, attacking those parts 

 where the skin is thinnest, as the eyelids, inside and outside, the 

 sheath, and the vagina. The eyelids especially always swell 

 where this fly abounds, and the swelling is sometimes so great 

 as to make the horse nearly blind, while the eye is red and 

 weeping. The injury however, is not permanent. 



The principal defense which the horse has against these 

 puny, but tormenting enemies, is his tail. On some parts of 

 his body he can remove them with his teeth and his feet ; and 

 that which cannot be done by these, is done by the tail. With 

 us, however, in far too many instances the effective instrument 

 which nature has furnished is removed, or materially impaired, 

 before he has attained maturity; and, as if the pains of 

 servitude were not sufficiently great and numerous, domestica- 

 tion is rendered still more intolerable by whim and caprice. 



