FAULTS INSEPARABLE FROM STABLES. 243 



the nerves, occasion the eyes to smart, disgust the fine sense of smell, 

 and destroy the health by preventing perfect oxygenation of the blood 



Misery, solitude, and confinement will generate disease m a man. 

 Wherefore should an animal be esteemed superior to such influences? 

 Impure air, sameness of food, and being tied to a manger, inducing fee- 

 ble bodily health, gradually undermine the powerful equine constitution. 

 Other evils, of a local nature, result from causes which might easily be 

 removed, were man, in his wisdom, only convinced such influences ought 

 to be destroyed. The forelegs of the stabled horse are always the first 

 to yield. Yet the prisoner may endure severe lameness in these mem- 

 bers, and, nevertheless, the body be so slightly sympathetic with the 

 affliction as actually to lay on fat. It is different with the hinder limbs ! 

 Should one of these last be injured, the entire frame languishes. The 

 quadruped then evidently pines in torture, and its flesh sensibly wastes. 



Yery different is the manner in which various physiologists account 

 for this peculiarity. Some appeal to the greater proximity of the an- 

 terior extremities to the heart, or to the center of circulation. That, 

 perhaps, is the generally received doctrine ; but as the free circulation of 

 the blood is essential to the healthy functions of the nerves, it is difficult 

 to comprehend why nearness to the heart should deprive a nerve of its 

 ability to communicate sensation. The head is supposed to be rendered 

 conspicuously sensitive, because of the great proportionate quantity of 

 blood which circulates in that region. The pretended rule, therefore, 

 will not bear the test of general application ; it must be discarded as an 

 assertion boldly put forward to cover ignorance. 



The forefeet of the horse are those portions of the frame which have 

 to endure the utmost limits of mortal perversity. The flooring of the 

 stall invariably inclines from the manger to the gangway. The hind 

 hoofs may, should the animal hang back the full length of its collar-rope, 

 rest in the open drain with the toes downward ; or the hind hoofs may, 

 in some cases, stand upon the gangway, the width of which the gutter 

 defines. The front limbs, however, can scarcely change their position. 

 The hoofs must rest upon the slanting bricks, which incline the anterior 

 of the foot in the upward direction. The forelegs must sustain, and 

 continue subject to the unnatural stress of their enforced position. 

 This silly and arbitrary arrangement in some measure accounts for the 

 fact that the front limbs of the horse are the first parts of the body to 

 fail, for these parts never, in the stable, are capable of rest, nor can they 

 be sensible to ease. 



It has, of late years, become the general practice to bleed the horse 

 from the sole of the forefoot. When such a custom is adopted, the 

 first portion of blood extracted is, commonly, cold as spring-water, or 



