160 ON CLOTHING, ETC. 



used with them, such as lengthy blanket-like sort of 

 quarter-pieces, or thick woollen blankets, with a com- 

 mon checkered quarter-piece on the top. But when a 

 horse has to sweat, four, five, or six times, doubly 

 clothed, the additional clothes then made use of, are 

 the old checkered clothes which have become so much 

 worn as not to be thought good enough for the horse 

 to wear in the stables by day, or to go out in to the 

 morning or evening exercise. These old clothes are 

 put in repair in the wintei", before the horses go into 

 regular training, and the leather and straps should be 

 taken off the withers of the clothes. There is no 

 occasion for leather about any part of the clothes a 

 horse has to sweat in ; and whenever they become stiff 

 and hard from repeated use, they should be washed 

 and perfectly dried ; they may then be rolled up with 

 the scrapers* in them, and put in a dry cupboard, 

 in the common saddle room. 



There are other suits of woollen clothes, which are 

 made of white serge. They are for the horses to 

 wear in summer, when it may be too hot for them to 

 wear the thick clothes. On such occasions, these white 



* Scrapers are wooden instruments, used for the purpose of 

 scraping' the horse after sweating, They are from 18 to 20 inches 

 in length, in breadth from two and a half to three inches, and made 

 round at the ends. The back part of them is about three eights of 

 an inch in thickness, and rounded. From this back part, they are 

 sloped off to the front edge, which should be smoothly rounded, of 

 a substance to give sufficient strength to the edge to stand the 

 scraping of the sweat oft' the horse's body. Scrapers are made of 

 elder, box, oak, ash or beech. 



