58 CONDITION. 



implicitly believe ; whose success I have compared with that 

 of other systems, as have other trainers before me. This 

 assurance renders me insistent in recommending it to those 

 who have not had the same opportunities to test it. 



As a fitting conclusion of our subject, Condition, I will 

 venture to give an extract from an admirable work on the 

 horse by Mr. Clark (from which I have already quoted at 

 p. 24 on food) : — 



" But the greatest caution," he remarks, " is necessary to be 

 observed with horses that are very fat. They require a long 

 course of moderate and regular exercise before they can be 

 put to that which is the least violent with safety. Their 

 fat, which they acquire by excessive heat, is melted by violent 

 exercise as it were into oil, and carried into the blood and 

 causes what is called an oily plethora, which produces a most 

 violent and sudden inflammation of the lungs, &c. 



" The viscidity of the oily matter obstructing the vessels 

 and preventing the other fluids passing through them, 

 frequently occasions sudden death ; many instances of which I 

 have known particularly in those horses which have been fed 

 with a great quantity of boiled meat in order to fatten them 

 for sale. To attain this desirable end and keep him in 

 robust health in an artificial state we must bear in mind 

 what he was when wild and imitate it as far as possible. 



" Count de Bufifon says that very warm climates, it would 

 appear, are destructive to horses, and that when they are 

 transported from a mild climate to a very warm one the 

 species degenerates. " 



It therefore may be granted that horses like a medium 

 climate bordering on cold rather than heat, for we find the same 

 author (vol. 3 page 38) states that in Iceland, where the cold 

 is extreme, horses though small are extremely vigorous. 



