231 MODERN FARRIER. 



of all superfluous fats and fluids, as wiU as to i'm* 

 prove the breathing; but purging and sweating 

 ought to be carefully and judiciously used, and a 

 proper regard should be' paid ta the constitution of 

 the animal. 



*We have happily got quit,' says Mr. Scott, in 

 his British Field Sports, ' of much of the stoving in 

 hot and suffocating stables,^ and of the excessive and 

 debilitating purgation of former days. Even the 

 malignant and bewitching humours, always sup- 

 posed to be resident in the body of the horse, have 

 been nearly laughed and exorcised out of it, since 

 the salutar}' horse-laugh originally raised against 

 them by Gibson and Bracken ; and could we but 

 both reason and experiment away the exhausting, 

 enfeebling, spirit-quelling, crippling sweat, we should 

 render our training and running stable system very 

 neai- to perfection; which indeed already is, with 

 the above stated exceptions, the most correct, ma- 

 turely considered, and comfortable to the horse, of 

 any other in existence.' 



In contirmation, the same writer says, ' Speed 

 matei'ially depends on the freshness, elasticity, and 

 healthy tone of the sinew^s, which one would sup- 

 pose can scarcely be promoted by a weekly laborious 

 and fatiguing gallop of four or six miles, under a 

 W'cight, alive or dead, of perhaps fifteen or sixteen 

 stone ; the horse not perhaps fairly able to race with 

 twelve — all horses beside, wliatever their powers, 

 age, nature; or constitution, being treated in the* 

 same way. If there be any satisfactory experi- 

 mental proofs to invalidate the above arguinents, 

 su<ih have not reached me ; I have never heard any 

 other plea for the necessity of forcibly reducing riui- 

 ning horses to the state of boite-lcanness, than that 

 of custom and opinion : and to dismiss this part of 

 the subject, granting that a severe method of train- 

 ing would rn w^e a someA\hat greater superiority of 

 performance, wo^dd it not be preferable on all hands 



