FIRST-HAND BITS OF STABLE LORE 



horses " look the part" and fill the eye, they will 

 not be denied, and insist upon but two points 

 — a horse's wind and eyes must be good. The 

 heavy English climate and the fondness for horse- 

 beans and other concentrated food over there, 

 work havoc with lungs, throat, and eyes, and for- 

 eign talent is therefore naturally suspicious of 

 " roarers," " whistlers," " grunters," " wheezers," 

 and " bHnky 'uns," as a dealer put it. For other 

 bodily infirmities, however, they have a large 

 toleration, and will put up with all sorts of 

 "ornaments" if considered in the price. In no 

 particular have they so taught us a lesson as in the 

 matter of purchasing cavalry and artillery horses. 

 Our idiotic governmental requirements compel 

 inspectors to condemn quantities of capital animals, 

 merely on the ground of slight physical defects 

 that amount to nothing, resulting in the accumu- 

 lation of a lot of brutes for our army use that 

 have no merit whatever but that of freedom from 

 blemish, and are in many cases utterly unfit for 

 the purposes intended. The foreigner, on the 

 contrary, fills his hand from our discards, with the 

 result that he accumulates from the leavings of 

 our inspectors a cracking lot of horses, a credit 

 to any army, but many of them blemished in 



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