CHAPTER lY. 



FOOD. 



65. — The natural food of the horse is grass : there is nothing 

 else upon which he will grow so large, keep so healthy, or live so 

 long. His alimentary canal can accommodate itself to the dry 

 seedless stalks of winter, to the green foliage of spring, or to the 

 nutritious seed pods of summer. On the stalks he keeps healthy, 

 on the green foliage he grows or fattens, on the seed pods he 

 attains his utmost power and vigour. 



60. — From these facts we learn at once from the teaching 

 of infallible nature upon what to feed liim for any required 

 purpose. Do we want him healthy and quiet but dull and 

 spiritless, and capable of no great amount of work, we give him 

 hay or even sweet straw. Do we want him fat, soft, and sleek, 

 though liable to puff like a fat man or woman, at his work, we 

 supply him with abundance of green grass. Do we want him 

 full of life and spirits, capable of desperate exertions or of working 

 steadily on for eiglit hours a day, we give him about the same 

 proportion of seed or corn, with the woody fibre on which it 

 grows, that nature gives him with ears of summer grass or grain 

 that he crops, and it is most important that we should find out 

 exactly what that proportion is, as it will show us at once the 

 utmost limit of concentration for which nature has adapted his 

 assimilating organs. 



67. — Under the most luxurious provision that nature ever 

 makes for him, that is when the grasses and cereals are full of 

 matured seeds, he cannot procure those seeds for himself with 

 less than from two to three times their bulk of chaff', hay, or 

 straw, and accordingly we find that his alimentary canal is not 

 adapted for anything of a more concentrated or less fibrous 



