216 BATTUEING IN A SMALL WAY. 



ceptible of complaints than one brought up more 

 hardily : he certainly would be more likely to take 

 cold than the latter, if both were to stand for hours 

 daily under the shelter of a hedge by way of a stable ; 

 but we do not want hunters to stand under hedges or 

 even in cold stables. The man of wealth would pro- 

 bably take cold if he ate his dinner, as the labourer 

 does, in the field in winter ; but he never does eat his 

 dinner there ; and we do not find that a horse pro- 

 perly warmed in every part (to which he is of course 

 accustomed) incapacitates him from facing a soaking 

 day with hounds, or an intense cold one if snipe or 

 duck shooting ; nor do race-horses or hunters take 

 cold one bit oftener at THEIR work than butchers' or 

 bakers' horses do in theirs. But, as I said by feed- 

 ing, if we WERE to render horses tender and liable to 

 colds, with all their baneful results, what are we to 

 do? It is better to risk a horse occasionally getting 

 unfit to work, to having an animal that never is fit for 

 it ; and this would be the case, as we go now-a-days, 

 if we treated colts or horses as they were treated a 

 hundred years ago. It is useless to talk of Nature 

 or Nature's rules where things are to be treated con- 

 trary to the rules of Nature. Clipping will of course 

 get off a long coat, but it is far better, if we can, to 

 prevent its getting on. I hold a clipped horse a 

 beastly sight. All we can say of it is, a horse will be 

 better, and go better, and is not so beastly a sight 

 clipped, as a horse with a long coat. A man whose 

 head has been shaved is not so beastly a sight as one 

 whose hair looks as if it was a preserve for game for 

 a Liliputian battue; but the bare poll does not set 

 him off to advantage, or look well beside a well kept 

 Brutus ; yet I would as soon see it as a clipped horse. 



