THE SUMMERING OF HUNTERS. 151 



should be done every morning for two or three 

 mornings, when a cure may usually be looked for. 

 Should heat and swelling of the leg arise on the 

 thrush drying up, a dose of laxative medicine is 

 called for. Next to too long toes and ragged feet, 

 thrush is the most common ailment we have to look 

 for whilst a horse is resting in a box. It frequently 

 acts as a safety-valve to the over-fed system. When 

 this is so, and we stop the discharge, we not un- 

 frequently have affections of the air-passages, lungs, 

 or bowels set up in its place. Simple as thrush 

 appears to be— and if we judge it by the ease with 

 which it is usually cured it does appear simple — we 

 know of no ailment more urgently needing profes- 

 sional care than thrush, for many reasons. 



The loose box which we are recommending as 

 a summer residence to our hunter ought to be near 

 a pasture to which he can betake himself at his 

 pleasure. Under favourable conditions, most of which 

 we have already hinted at, the hunter should be 

 much in the pasture up to the end of June. The 

 skin during this time ought to receive the most 

 careful attention. Horse ponds are a nuisance in a 

 summer pasture where a horse runs, as he is tempted 

 to wade in and stand in the mud and water if the 

 weather be at all hot, and this renders his skin filthy, 

 besides the much greater evil of determining the 

 blood to the bowels and lungs and the risk of inflam- 

 mation thereby. Should flies tease, and two or three 

 horses be running in the same pasture, a good deal 



