THE COACH-HOUSE, HARNESS-ROOM, ETC. 93 



Collars require the greatest attention and nicety in fitting, 

 for they must not only fit well, but exactly if too long, they 

 are as bad as if they were too short, too wide, or too narrow ; 

 in each case sore shoulders are certainties. It follows, there- 

 fore, that, where more horses than one are kept, each should 

 have its own collar, which should be plainly marked inside, 

 so as to preclude the possibility of mistake. For private car- 

 riages they can be made as light and elegant as is compatible 

 with strength and safety ; but for long journeys or coach-work 

 they can scarcely have what the collar-makers call too much 

 stuff in them. 



Before putting the collar on, the man who is about to do so 

 should put his knee into it and widen it a little ; few people 

 know what agony some horses suffer from having a narrow 

 collar brutally shoved over their eyes and ears, and the man 

 who invents a collar which could be opened at the 'top, and 

 closed again neatly when under the names strap, would be the 

 greatest benefactor to horses whose mission is harness. The 

 great difficulty about such a collar, and one which has never 

 been surmounted yet, is that it is impossible to make it keep 

 its shape, and it is more liable than all others to give sore 

 shoulders. A collar when on should lie flat on each side of 

 the horse's neck, with just room enough at the bottom for a 

 man's moderate-sized hand to go through. When taken off, the 

 collar should be well washed with soap and warm water and 

 thoroughly dried, ^ near a hot fire, before being again used. > 



False collars, a flat piece of leather made to fit under the 

 actual collar, may be useful to protect a horse's shoulders for 

 the first time or two he is put into harness, and some horses 

 always require to wear one. Harness-makers have a formula 

 they sometimes make use of when measuring a horse for a 

 collar, and Messrs. Spence & Storrars, of Letham, Ladybank, 

 Fife, invented, about the year 1885, a horse-collar measurer, 

 which, in its arrangement of framework and movable pegs, 

 bears some resemblance to the configurator used by some 

 hatters to measure their customers for a hat. We know 



