IKE HORSE AND ITS DISEASES. 43 



for support on the wheel carriage, and thus have a 

 tendency to lean forward, and come down upon the road. 



Stable Management and Feeding. 



It is impossible for any man living, who has made the 

 horse the object of his contemplation, not to feel the 

 greatest mortification, when chance or choice brings him 

 to a survey of the bad stables some horses have to live 

 in, with all their horrid inconveniences. To those 

 totally unacquainted with the superior and systematic 

 management of stables in general, it may all bear the 

 appearance of propriety, consequently paves no way for 

 the corroding reflections of vexation and disappointment, 

 but to the experienced and attentive observer, whose 

 sensations move in direct union with the feelings of the 

 animal he bestrides, and the accommodation of whose 

 horse is held in equal estimation and retention with his 

 own, they excite the joint emotions of pity and surprise. 

 Horses in general produced from stables of this descrip- 

 tion, all bear the appearance of temporary invalids, from 

 living, or rather existing, in a scene of almost total 

 darkness ; they approach the light with reluctance, and 

 every new object with additional apprehension; they 

 walk out of the stable in a state of debilitation and 

 stifihess of the extremities, as if threatened with universal 

 lameness ; the legs are swelled from the knees and 

 hocks downwards, to the utmost exhaustion of the 

 integuments, which, with the dry and contracted state 

 of the narrow-heeled hoof, bears no ill affinity to the 

 overloaded shoe. Upon more accurate inspection, we 

 find the list of happy effects still increased with those 

 usual concomitants, inveterate cracks, running thrush, 

 very frequently accompanied by a husky short cough, or 

 asthmetic difficulty of respiration, in gradual progression 

 to a broken wind. 



The disadvantages arising from horses standing in 

 perpetual darkness, or with a very faint and glimmering 



