FEEDING. 133 



offer for introducing a subject at the close that may seem 

 foreign to the title of this book. But in the use and 

 management of horses these two subjects interlace, and 

 we cannot touch upon one without involving the sym- 

 pathy of the other. Aside from the physical handling of 

 the horse there is the vital subject of feeding, and the 

 proper course to pursue to put the most life and 

 strength into him and obtain the greatest amount of 

 work or speed out of him with the least possible wear and 

 tear. This is a subject that involves the attention and 

 skill of marine engineers in the building and running 

 of steamships. It is a subject wliich only a small per- 

 centaofe of livers understand in their own cases. The 

 commonest sanitary rules are violated at every meal. 

 There is too much reliance placed upon theory and fancy 

 taste, and too little on judgment or reason in the daily 

 necessity of eating. The mother allows her infant to 

 nurse until the overloaded stomach rebels and throws up 

 the surplus. Like the boiling caldron it must either 

 boil over or burst, and because nature comes to the relief 

 of the child we are told that she tells the mother what 

 to do. But while thousands of tiny and untimely graves 

 bear evidence of the truth of this theory, the mothers of 

 one generation after another are willing to test the virus 

 of this cause of death and consequent grief. 



We dwell upon this subject in the interest of the horse 

 because we see the evidence on every hand of the gross 

 errors committed in the family home as well as in the 

 stable, and the comparison that can be drawn between 

 two horses that are differently fed should be known best 

 to the person interested in their use. The carefully fed 

 Irish hunter, that takes the country as it comes from 

 morning till night, is fed on three-year-old potato-oats 

 and three-year-old hay to harden him and give him wind, 

 and if he be a steeple-chaser the ownership of the chal- 

 lenge cup depends upon his wind as much as on his 



