56 AMERICAN STABLE GUIDE. 



that may at any moment be called upon for the exercise 

 of all its powers, should be from sixteen to eighteen feet 

 long, by about twelve feet wide. Horses of slower and 

 more regular work will not require so large a box. 



Sometimes there are two men in charge of a single horse, 

 feeding, grooming, exercising, or training it, in a way each 

 individual thinks best. For our part, we have seldom seen 

 a horse sent to such places, and managed according to the 

 whim of the trainer, return improved in health, vigor, or 

 speed ; but can recall many instances where good horses 

 have been ruined in wind and limb by the injudicious and 

 often cruel manner of the trainer, in the endeavor to 

 exact a rate of speed that by nature the animal was never 

 designed to perform. Yet the man of the sulky and jockey- 

 cap could not see how this could be so. All horses are 

 not Flora Temples or Dexters, and to credit the man who 

 through force of circumstances became the trainer of such 

 fast animals with their great speed is absurd, as he would be 

 performing an impossibility, and laying claim to a power 

 that can never be attained but by the hand of Nature, pro- 

 per selection and judicious breeding. We do not, how- 

 ever, say that good and careful training has nothing to do 

 with the development of speed ; the training of the pugilist 

 and the acrobat for their subsequent performances would 

 dispel such a delusion. But at the same time, all men are 

 not fitted by nature to become experts at such callings, nor 

 are all horses that find their way to the racing or training 

 stable adapted to perform their mile in 2.40, even with the 



