FOOD AND GENERAL TREATMENT. 419 



a rule, should be placed higher than the animars head. The 

 flooring and sides of the building should be air-tight, or, if 

 the sides can not be made so all the way up, this end should 

 be secured in their fitting together for at least several feet 

 from the floor. This is to prevent the cold winds from blow- 

 ing directly upon the horse. Many stables are so open that 

 the winds can blow through the large open cracks in the 

 sides and floors with stinging keenness, and then the horse, 

 fastened in his stall so as to have no exercise whatever, be- 

 comes chilled throughout his whole frame, and colds, with 

 most serious lung or constitutional afl:eetions, are frequently 

 brought on. The horse is probably more likely to take cold 

 upon any dry, cold night, when housed in such a stable, 

 than if he were running shelterless upon the common ; be- 

 cause in the lattet* case he would be pretty sure to avail him- 

 self of his freedom to move about, and this exercise would 

 help to keep him warm. 



On the other hand, close, hot stables are most decidedly 

 objectionable. Except in very cold weather, the atmosphere 

 within the stable should not be kept more than ten or twelve 

 degrees above the temperature out of doors. It is not desir- 

 able to make the building warm, so much as to shut out the 

 cold currents of air. This extremely unhealthy. condition of 

 the stable is much more common in the city than in the coun- 

 try, and was formerly a still more prevalent evil than it is now. 



A number of horses shut up in a narrow, close stable pro- 

 duce, by their breathing, a most deleterious change in the 

 character of the air. Each pair of lungs throws off' an im- 

 mense amount of carbonic acid gas, and with this the atmos- 

 phere in a small, tight apartment soon becomes so greatly 

 surcharged as to be absolutely poisonous. Yet how many 

 stables are there in the United States, as elsewhere through- 

 out the civilized world, in which a most disproportionate 

 number of horses are shut up all night, and much of the day 

 besides, with no aperture left open for the escape of the foul, 

 fetid air, or the admission from without of that which is 

 fresh and cool. 



