356 THE fiORSE. 



is fed on wheat should have very little hay. The proportion should not 

 be more than one truss of hay to two of straw. Wheaten flour, boiled 

 in water to the thickness of starch, is given with good effect in over 

 purging, and especially if combined with chalk and opium. 



Beans. — These form a striking illustration of the principle, that the 

 nourishing or strengthening effects of the different articles of food depend 

 more upon some peculiar property which they have, or some combination 

 which they form, than on the actual quantity of nutritive matter. Beans 

 contain but five hundred and seventy parts of nutritive matter, yet they 

 add materially to the vigour of the horse. There are many horses that 

 will not stand hard work without beans being mingled with their food, 

 and these not horses whose tendency to purge it may be necessary to 

 restrain by the astringency of the bean. There is no traveller who is not 

 aware of the difference in the spirit and continuance of his horse if he 

 allows or denies him beans on his journey. They afford not merely a 

 temporary stimulus, but they may be daily used without losing their 

 power, or producing exhaustion. Two pounds of beans may, with 

 advantage, be mixed with the chaff of the agricultural horse, during the 

 winter. In summer, the quantity may be lessened, or the beans altogether 

 discontinued. Beans are generally given whole. This is very absurd ; for the 

 young horse, whose teeth are strong, seldom requires them ; while the old 

 horse, to whom they are in a manner necessary, is scarcely able to masticate 

 them, swallows many of them whole which he is unable to break, and drops 

 much corn from his mouth in the ineffectual attempt to break them. Beans 

 should not be merely split, but crushed ; they will even then give sufficient 

 employment to the grinders of the animal. Some postmasters use chaff with 

 beans instead of oats. With hardly-worked horses they may possibly be 

 allowed ; but in general cases, the beans, without oats, would be too 

 binding and stimulating, and would produce costiveness, and probably 

 megrims or staggers. 



Peas are occasionally given. They appear to be in a slight degree 

 more nourishing than beans, and not so heating. They contain five hun- 

 dred and seventy-four parts of nutritive matter. For horses of slow work 

 they may be used ; but the quantity of chaff should be increased, and a 

 few oats added. They have not been found to answer with horses of quick 

 draught. It is essential that they should be crushed ; otherwise on ac- 

 count of their globular form, they are apt to escape from the teeth, and 

 many are swallowed whole. Exposed to warmth and moisture in the 

 stomach, they swell very much, and may painfully and injuriously distend it. 



Many horses have died after gorging themselves with peas, and the 

 stomach has been found to have been burst by their swelling. If a small 

 phial is filled with peas, and warm water poured on them, and the 

 bottle tightly corked, it will burst in a few hours. 



Herbage, green and dry, constitutes a principal part of the food of the 

 horse. There are 'few things with regard to which the farmer is so 

 careless as the mixture of grasses on both his upland and meadow 

 pasture. Hence we find, in the same field, the ray grass, coming to per- 

 fection only in a loamy soil, not fit to cut until the middle or latter part of 

 .July, and yielding little aftermath ; the meadow fox-tail, best cultivated 

 in a clayey soil, fit for the scythe in the beginning of June, and yielding 

 a plentiful aftermath ; the glaucous fescue grass, ready at the middle 

 of June, and rapidly deteriorating in value as its seeds ripen ; and the 

 fertile meadow grass, increasing in value until the end of July. These 

 are circumstances the importance of which will, at no distant period, be 

 recognised. In the mean lime, Sinclair's account of the different grasses, 



