124 HOBSE POETEAITUEE. 



fliction at present, as I shall have many a long story to 

 tell before the summer is ended. 



PUPIL. In place of rejoicing, I will lament that you 

 have resolved to postpone the relation, having a good deal 

 of anxiety to learn the reason why you forsook the grace- 

 ful gallop of the young thoroughbred the very poetry 

 of motion for the rougher gait of the trotter. I shall 

 resume my own history witfc pleasure, as I hope soon 

 to convince you of the points where, as the lawyers say, 

 we "join issue," the profit of raising thoroughbreds for 

 trotters, and failing that, the finest carriage horses in the 

 world. I left off with the first colts a year old, fields laid 

 out, paddocks and barns built, but with neither track nor 

 training stables erected. We will first put our yearlings 

 in a suitable pasture and then build the stables and track. 

 The field selected is one lying on the side of the bluff, 

 where the herbage is the shortest. This is chosen for the 

 reason that we want their supply of food to be mainly 

 grain, as tending to form more muscle and tendon, and a 

 denser, finer bone, than if living on succulent food. They 

 are fed regularly twice a day, three quarts apiece in the 

 morning of oats, and in the evening six or eight ears of 

 sound corn. The slope of the bluff is quite at a sharp 

 angle from the level field at the foot of it, in many places 

 steep, with patches of hazel bushes along the hill-side. 

 The frolicsome spirit of the colts leads them to gambol 

 up and athwart the hill, leaping the smaller clumps of 

 bushes, and bringing every muscle into full play. They 

 are salted twice a week, at which time the halters are put 

 on and their feet examined, to see that the horn is not 

 breaking away unequally. There being no stones to wear 

 the hoof, it requires more care than it otherwise would, 

 and we will have to cut away the extra supply that threat- 

 ens to give a wrong set to the pastern. Should they not 

 keep in as good order as we would like, the grain must 



