FOOD. 379 



twenty pounds of the furze are given, five pounds of straw, tlie beans, and three 

 pounds of the oats, may be withdrawn. 



It may not be uninteresting- to conclude this catalogue of the different articles of 

 horse-food with a list of the quantities of nutritive matter contained in each of them ; 

 for although these quantities cannot be considered as expressing the actual value of 

 each, because other circumstances besides the simple quantity of nutriment seem to 

 influence their etfect in supporting the strength and condition of the horse, yet many 

 a useful hint may be derived when the farmer looks over the produce of his soil, and 

 inquires what other grasses or vegetables might suit his land. The list is partly 

 taken from Sir Humphry Davy's Agricultural Chemistry : — 1000 parts of wheat cou- 

 tain 955 parts of nutritive matter ; barley, 920 ; oats, 743 ; peas, 574 ; beans, 570 ; 

 potatoes, 230; red beet, 148; parsneps, 99; carrots, 98. Of tiie grasses, 1000 parts 

 of the meadow cat's-tail contain, at the time of seeding, 98 parts of nutritive matter; 

 narrow-leaved meadow grass in seed, and sweet-scented soft grass in flower, 95; 

 narrow-leaved and flat-stalked meadow grass in flower, fertile meadow grass in seed, 

 and tall fescue in flower, 93 ; fertile meadow grass, meadow fescue, reed-like fescue, 

 and creeping soft grass in flower, 78 ; sweet-scented solt grass in flower, and the 

 aftermath, 77; florin, cut in the winter, 76; tall fescue, in the aftermath, and meadow 

 soft grass in flower, 74 ; cabbage, 73 ; crested dog's-tail and brome, when flowering, 

 71; yellow oat, in flower, 66; Swedish turnips, 64; narrow-leaved meadow grass, 

 creeping beet, round-headed cocksfoot, and spiked fescue, 59 ; roughish and fertile 

 meadow grass, flowering, 56 ; florin, in summer, 54 ; common turnips, 43 ; sain-foin, 

 and broad-leaved and long-rooted clover, 39; white clover, 32; and lucern, 23. 



The times of feeding should be as equally divided as convenience will permit; and 

 when it is likely that the horse will be kept longer than usual from home, the nose- 

 bag should invariably be taken. The small stomach of the horse is emptied in a few 

 hours ; and if he is suffered to remain hungry mucli beyond his accustomed time, he 

 will afterwards devour his food so voraciously as to distend the stomach and endanger 

 an attack of staggers. When this disease appears in the farmer's stable, he nTay 

 attribute it to various causes ; the true one, in the majority of instances, is irregularity 

 in feeding. If the reader will turn back to page 97, he will be convinced that this 

 deserves more serious attention tiian is generally given to it. 



When extra work is required from the animal, l,he system of management is often 

 injudicious, for a double feed is put before him, and as soon as he has swallowed it, 

 he is started. It would be far better to give him a double feed on the previous eve- 

 ning, which would be digested before he is wanted, and then he might set out in the 

 morning after a very small portion of corn has been given to him, or perhaps only a 

 little hay. One of the most successful methods of enabling a horse to get well 

 through a long journey, is to give him only a little at a time while on the road, and 

 at night to indulge him with a double feed of corn and a full allowance of beans. 



Water. — This is a part of stable management little regarded by the farmer. He 

 lets his horses loose morning and night, and they go to the nearest pond or brook and 

 drink their fill, and no harm results, for they obtain that kind of water which nature 

 designed them to have, in a manner prepared for them by some unknown influence 

 of the atmosphere, as well as by the deposition of many saline admixtures. The dif- 

 ference between hard and soft water is known to every one. In hard water, soap will 

 curdle, vegetables will not boil soft, and the saccharine matter of the malt cannot be 

 fully obtained in the process of brewing. There is nothing in which the different 

 effect of hard and soft water is so evident, as in the stomach and digestive or<jans of 

 the horse. Hard water, drawn fresh from the well, will assuredly make the coat of a 

 horse unaccustomed to it stare, and it will not unfrequently gripe and otherwise injure 

 him. Instinct or experience has made even the horse himself conscious of this, for 

 he will never drink hard water if he has access to soft, and he will leave the most 

 transparent and pure water of the well for a river, although the stream may be turbid, 

 and even for the muddiest pool.* He is injured, however, not so much by the hard- 

 ness of the well-water as by its coldness — particularly by its coldness in summer, 

 and when it is many degrees below the temperature of the atmosphere. The water 



* Some trainers have so much fear of hard or strange water, that they carry with them to 

 the different courses the water that the animal has been accustomed to drink, and that which 

 they know agrees with it. 



