9G FOOD. 



exercise, travelling, and repeated running. But the 

 objection to turning out horses of this description is, 

 they have generally voracious appetites; not being 

 satisfied with eating grass only, but they eat a quan- 

 tity of dirt, or any other stuff about the grounds they 

 meet with and fancy. If a horse of this sort were to 

 be turned out for three or four months, he would at the 

 end of that time have become very fat, soft, and 

 bloated ; and when taken up, he would be unreason- 

 ably coarse and out of form ; the muscles of his body 

 and tendons of his legs, from want of proper attention, 

 would have become very much relaxed. To get the 

 horse again into training condition, could not perhaps 

 be done so effectually as it would have been in the 

 first instance; and if it could, it would take as much 

 time and trouble (exclusive of breaking) as when he 

 first left his paddock as a colt. 



In some stables in which I once lived, I remember 

 an instance of a race-horse which belonged to my 

 master being kicked in the hock, and the part becom- 

 ing much swollen. Various were the remedies applied, 

 without reducing the enlargement ; at last, it was 

 thought advisable to turn the horse out, night and day, 

 into a large paddock, it being supposed, from the gentle 

 exercise he would then give himself, that the hock 

 might become fine. But this latter remedy had not 

 the effect desired, that of reducing the enlargement. 

 How long the horse remained out I do not remember ; 

 but I very well recollect, when he was taken up, that 



