142 WALKING EXERCISE. 



those horses which may be too hearty, and full 

 of their gambols. Thirdly, to give delicate flighty 

 horses an appetite for their food, as well as to 

 assist in steadying them. 



To describe the precise time that may be re- 

 quired for horses when in training to be at 

 walking exercise, to accomplish the purposes I 

 have just mentioned, would be too tedious; suffice 

 it, therefore, to say, that some horses may not 

 require to be at this sort of exercise more than 

 half an hour, some others an hour or an hour 

 and a half; on some occasions two hours may 

 be given to very delicate flighty horses, for the 

 purpose of increasing their appetites and steady- 

 ing them. Horses that are in strong work, when 

 kept too long at walking exercise, get careless and 

 become stale and weary on their legs. There is 

 no greater proof of this, than that when they are 

 in the stables, and have been dressed and fed, 

 the stables are no sooner shut up, than they im- 

 mediately lay themselves down at full length, and 

 thus they lie stretched out until the stables are 

 again opened. Now, generally speaking, unless 

 horses are over fatigued in their work, they have 

 no natural propensity to lie down more than six 

 or eight hours out of the four-and-twenty. 



