FOOD AND GENERAL TREATMENT. 427 



able patience, as well as dexterity. It will be readily ascer- 

 tained whether a horse has been well dressed by rubbing him 

 with one of the fingers. A greasy stain will detect the idle- 

 ness of the groom. "When, however, the horse is changing 

 his coat, both the curry-comb and the brush should be used 

 as lightly as possible. 



" Whoever would be convinced of the benefit of friction to 

 the horse's skin, and to the horse generally, needs only to 

 observe the efiects produced by well hand-rubbing the legs 

 of a tired horse. While every enlargement subsides, and 

 the painful stiffness disappears, and the legs attain their 

 natural warmth, and become fine, the animal is evidently 

 and rapidly reviving; he attacks his food with appetite, and 

 then quietly lies down to rest." 



CHANgES OF WEATHER AND TEMPERATURE. 



Nature prepares the horse, as it does all the other members 

 of the animal creation, for the changes of the seasons — from 

 heat to cold, and from cold to heat. There is a wonderful 

 provision for this puipose, in the arrangement of the vary- 

 ing conditions of the skin — the opening of the pores as sum- 

 mer advances, and their closing upon the approach of winter. 

 Another admirable adaptation of conditions to surrounding 

 circumstances is exhibited by the growth of the hair in the 

 fall season, when it is soon to be needed for the protection of 

 the animal from the rigor of winter, and then by its gradual 

 shedding in the spring, when it is needed no longer. 



These changes are rarely attended by any inconvenience 

 to the horse, much less any serious ills; but there are other 

 changes created by man, his master, that often very much 

 afiect his health and condition. Taking him out of a warm 

 stable into a cold, beating rain, or into a sharp atmosphere, 

 crisp with a biting frost, constitutes one of these unfavorable 

 changes. Another is driving him very hard and then hitch- 

 ing him to a post in the cold or storm, without any protection, 

 and thus allowing him to remain until his whole frame is 

 numb and chilled with the cold. Another is turning him 



