398 AGRICULTURE AND THE HORSE. 



take the whip without emotion, and with an indifference 

 a thousand times more annoying than all his impetuos- 

 ity had ever been. I do not have pullers now. I break 

 my colts at two years old, gently, easily, good-natured- 

 ly ; amuse myself with their coltish ways ; never use a 

 harsh bit, no bar-bit, no bit with keys and toggles, but 

 a large, well-covered snaffle, which will not chafe the 

 corners of the mouth as a bar does, and which is kept 

 steady with an easy bearing-rein. A bitting apparatus 

 I despise, as I do a colt which has fussed and fretted 

 and champed and fumed until he has fussed and fretted 

 himself over on to one rein. When a colt has well 

 learned his lesson at two years old, he gets no more 

 education from me until he is four or five. I never 

 knew one to forget what he had learned, and have 

 never yet had occasion to re-break one who had been 

 allowed his two or three years of idleness, liberty, and 

 growth. I think in this way you avoid all violence in 

 training ; you do not interfere with the colt's spirits ; 

 you do not expose him to wrenches and strains ; and 

 you give him a chance to harden his muscles by free 

 exercise in the open air, just at the time when his bones 

 are becoming well knit, and his nervous power strong 

 and enduring. 



As a colt may be spoiled by over-handling, so may 

 he be ruined by over-feeding. Dr. Buckingham of 

 Boston, in his admirable address read before the Massa- 

 chusetts Medical Society at its last annual meeting, 

 after speaking of the reckless manner in which the 



