VT.NTILATION. 



animals, are matters which have received, of late, ! 

 leal of merited attention. Thepwnerof; 

 horse- k, intent upon protecting these 



an.! cold, and placing them in the 

 moat favourable portion to take on fat, often ex- 

 poses them to th- mo^t injurious effects induced 

 by the breathing of impure air. We generally 



*ys an able writer upon this subject, 

 "that the unhealthiness of the atmosphere in 

 which stabled horses and cattle are p!a< -d, 

 increase* with the value of the animal ; this is 



,Ily the case with the horse. The groom 

 :node so easy in his endeavours to 



for his horses a fine coat, as that of 



i them in a high temperature, is pretty 

 surf, if not restrained, to effect this by excluding 



n stable every breath of air by which its 

 temperature may be lowered, or its purity pre- 



. It results then (often, it is true, by slow 

 degrees) that the animal, from the breathing an 

 atmosphere surcharged as a certain consequence 

 with the carbonic acid gas emitted from the 

 lungs of the horses in the stable, and with fumes 

 of ammonia from the decomposing urine with 

 which the floor is saturated (a decomposition 

 accelerated by the warmth of the place), becomes 

 tender and diseased. That to this source must 

 be attributed the majority of those diseases of 

 the lungs by which so many valuable horses are 

 annually carried off, there is no reason to doubt. 

 * The temperature of the stable,' says Professor 

 Youatt, in bis excellent treatise on the horse, 

 * houUi nev*r in winter exceed ten degrees 

 above that of the external air, and during the 

 rest of the year should be as similar to it as 

 possible.' And he adds a fact which is far too 

 little known to the owners of live stock : ' The 

 r turn to a hot stable is quite as dangerous as 



inge from a heated atmosphere to a cold 

 an-! biting air. Many a horse that has travelled 

 without injury over a bleak country, has been 

 suddenly seized with inflammation and fever 

 when he has immediately at the end of his 

 journey been surrounded with heated and foul 

 air.* 'And,' he adds in another place, 'of no- 

 thing are we more certain, than that in the 

 majority of the maladies of the horse, those of 

 the worst and most fatal character, directly or 

 indirectly are to be attributed to the unnatural 

 heat of the stable.' The evil, then, being cer- 



M remedy merely consisting in the better 

 and more regular ventilation of the stable, can I 

 ur^e upon the horse's owner a more reasonable 

 or a more profitable improvement than this? 

 My own experience tells me that a warm box, 

 wi-ll ventilated and constantly kept clean, is by 

 far the best and the most healthy medium in 

 which a horse can be placed. Both deanlinesx 

 and ventilation must, of course, go together; for 

 it is easy to lose the advantages of ventilation 



-regard to the cleanliness of the stable, 

 i-d to the stall-fed cow and the ox, 



M erroneous mode of treatment is too 

 constantly adopted : warmth and quiet, and an 

 absence of light, it is true, have all been deter- 

 mined to be highly conducive to the rapid pro- 



t the animal to maturity, but no sensible 

 farmer ever yet concluded that the purity or the 

 foulness of the air in which the animal is placed, 

 is a matter of perfect indifference: an-' 



'-'iy instances are such cows, such fatten- 

 in oxen, stall-fed, in an atmosphere in which 

 the lungs of the animals must be weakened, their 



ion 



VENTILATION. 



health endangered ? How commonly do we see 

 them placed in low close stables, into which u 

 breath of fresh air rarely enters >. It is idle to 

 contend that to con fine them in such an atmo- 

 sphere does them no injury. It has been found 

 that the same kind of impure air which these 

 animals are too often made to endure, is cer- 

 tain death to the smaller animals ; and, that the 

 mortality increases as the size of the animal 

 decreases, has been well shown by many curious 

 and valuable inquiries. I will give a few only 

 of these, being quite sure that to many of my 

 readers they will afford matter of grave and 

 useful reflection, when they are considering the 

 ventilation not only of the stables of their live 

 stock, but of the cottages of their labourers, and 

 the rooms which the farmer is himself inhabiting. 

 Let us commence our inquiries, then, with the 

 effects of bad air upon the smaller tribes of 

 birds, and proceed afterwards to the larger ani- 

 mals. * It is well known,' says Dr. Arnott 

 (Report of Commissioners upon the Health of 

 Towns, p. 61), 'that a canary bird suspended 

 near the top of a curtained bedstead in which 

 people have slept, will generally, owing to the 

 impurity of the air, be found dead in the morn- 

 ing; and small, close rooms, in the habitations 

 of the poor, are sometimes as ill-ventilated as 

 the curtained bedstead.' 



" Mr. Edwin Chadvvick, the excellent Secre- 

 tary to the Poor-Law Commissioners, in his able 

 supplementary report upon the sanatory condi- 

 tion of the labouring classes, gives some striking 

 facts in illustration of the ill effects of bad smelU 

 upon the health of small birds. He says (p. 10), 

 ' In the course of some inquiries which I made 

 with Professor Owen, when examining a slaugh- 

 terman as to the effects of the effluvia of animal 

 remains on himself and family, some other facts 

 were elicited illustrative of the effects of such 

 effluvia on still more delicate life. The man 

 had lived in Bear Yard, near Clare Market, 

 which was exposed to the combined effluvia 

 from a slaughter-house and a tripe factory. He 

 was a bird fancier, but he found that he could 

 not rear his birds in this place. He had known 

 a bird, fresh caught in the summer time, die there 

 in a week. He particularly noted, as having a 

 fatal influence on the birds, the stench raised by 

 boiling down the fat from the tripe offal. He 

 said, ' You may hang the cage out of the garret 

 window, in any house round Bear Yard, and if 

 it be a fresh bird it will be dead in a week.' 

 He had previously lived for a time in the same 

 neighbourhood, in a room over a crowded burial- 

 ground in Portugal Street. At times, in the 

 morning, he had seen a mist rise from the ground, 

 and the smell was offensive. That place was 

 equally fatal to his birds. He had removed to 

 another dwelling-house in Vere Street, Clare 

 Market, which is beyond the smell from this 

 particular place, and he was now enabled to keep 

 his birds. In town, however, the ordinary sing- 

 ing birds did not actually live more than about 

 eighteen months. In cages, in the country, such 

 birds were known to live as long as nine years or 

 more, on the same food. When he particularly 

 wished to preserve a pet bird, he sent it for a 

 time into the country; and by repeating this 

 removal he preserved them much lonser. The 

 fact of the pernicious effect of offensive smells 

 on the small graminivorous birds, and the short 

 duration of their life in close rooms and districts. 



