136 



Centaur ; 



NATURAL CLEANLINESS OF THE HORSE. 



•* But he was fastidious as a lord, 

 And particular about bed and board; 

 But spirited and docile too, 

 Wbate'er was to be done, would do." 



ERHAPS no animal is so fastidious about 

 its food and drink as the horse, which is 

 naturally an herbivorous animal ; hence 

 its thin and muscular lips, its firm and 

 compressed mouth, and its sharp incisor 

 teeth, are admirably adapted to seizing 

 and cropping the grass ; while the 

 peculiar construction of some of the 

 bones of the face enable it to grind 

 down its food as perfectly as it could be 

 ground in the best constructed mill. 



The olfactory nerve of the horse is more than four times 

 the size of that in man. Hence the horse can detect smells 

 that might escape the notice of man, and an effluvia that did 

 not attract his attention might be a source of great annoy- 

 ance to the horse. 



It is a well-known fact that horses will not eat food that 

 has been breathed upon and left in the trough or manger ; 

 consequently care should be taken never to pack or put more 

 food in the manger than can be readily disposed of. 



The horse is as particular about the water it drinks as the 

 food it eats ; and it is asserted by some authorities that the 

 quality of the water supplied has a peculiar efiect upon the 

 animal. Thus, hard water, freshly drawn from the well 

 causes griping and roughens the coat of the animal. The 

 temperature of the water given to a horse is a matter of very 

 great consequence. "Water taken from a running stream 

 will rarely harm ; but if drawn from a wall, by its coldness, 

 not unfrequently produces colic, spasm, and even death. 



