328 THE HOUSE AND HIS STRUCTURE. 



Such a result might have been expected. In every 

 case when I had made inquiries it turned out that the 

 horse had been taken from soft pasture land where he 

 had passed all his previous life, and had been taken over 

 the stony road without any preparation. Of course his 

 hoofs gave way. But had he been kept for some time on 

 hard, stony ground, such as is the natural condition for 

 which the hoof is constructed, the horn would have 

 become hard enough to perform its complex duties. 



It is scarcely possible to find better advice than that 

 which was given by Xenophon in his treatise on " Horse- 

 manship," written somewhere about the time when the 

 prophet Malachi lived. 



No one was better qualified than Xenophon to give 

 advice, and there is no one whose advice can demand 

 more respect. As a general, the Wellington of his day ; 

 as a writer, the crystalline and artful simplicity of his 

 style is curiously like that of our own Addison; as a 

 hunter, and, indeed, in all kinds of sport, he was the 

 acknowledged authority of his time, as is shown in 

 his " Cysegeticus." With regard to the horse, the man 

 who conducted that marvellous "Betreat of the Ten 

 Thousand " over so long and difficult a track, was 

 likely to understand the management of the horse's hoof. 

 Here are some of his dicta. 



"To prevent stable floors from being smooth, they 

 should have stones similar to a horse's hoofs in size 

 inserted in the ground, for such stable floors give firm- 

 ness to the feet of horses that stand on them. 



