142 THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 



In ascertaining this amount of suffering, however, we 

 must not commit the error of estimating a horse's sensation 

 by what, under similar circumstances, we imagine would 

 be our own, for the cases are quite different. 



Throughout the frame or fabric of man, his blood, 

 however proud it may be, circulates so feebly, that on 

 being subjected to a low temperature it actually, like 

 fluid in a pipe, freezes in his veins ; whereas throughout 

 the body of a horse it is propelled with such violence, 

 that, like the deep water in the Canada lakes, it is beyond 

 the power of cold, however intense, to stop it ; and accord- 

 ingly, when everything else around stands frozen, it 

 triumphantly continues its fluent course. In fact, the 

 relative power of the two animals to resist cold is fully 

 proportionate to the difference between their muscular 

 strength; and as the human being, notwithstanding its 

 weakness, is strong enough to endure the sudden tran- 

 sition from a hot bath to a cold one, or, as is the custom 

 in Eussia, to a roll on the snow, so, a fortiori, is a hunter 

 gifted by Nature with a circulation of blood powerful 

 enough to enable him, without injury or suffering, to bear 

 an apparently unnatural mode of treatment, which, al- 

 though it makes us almost shiver to think of, is productive 

 to his stouter frame of beneficial results, of inestimable 

 value. 



