254 THE HORSE. 



appetite and digestion ; but if these be over marked 

 in a craving horse,, the surplus nourishment, instead 

 of imparting strength and powers of activity and ex- 

 ertion, will rather tend to line him with fat, in the 

 proper style of a bullock or a hog : then go the heavy 

 sweaters to work, to fuse and drain off in copious 

 streams, that material which has been so uselessly 

 and mischievously accumulated ; but this is not 

 always done with impunity, and may soon be done 

 once too often, both for the limbs and constitution of 

 the horse. The digestive powers of horses vary very 

 much, and it is a point of great and needful skill in a 

 groom, to learn critically, the daily quantum of solid 

 corn that the stomach of his horse is able to convert 

 to real and effective nourishment. Racers indeed, 

 must be sweated, but the practice is not now, at New- 

 market at least, carried to the excess of former days. 

 As to the hunter, with two or three months' regular 

 training after physic, and if above himself, frequent 

 rather long, and sometimes brushing gallops over 

 ploughed grounds, not too heavy, he will appear in 

 the season, not rough, but ready, and with a due por- 

 tion upon him, of that good Nimrodian flesh above 

 quoted, and none other. Strong work, and sweating 

 a horse the day before he hunts, I look upon to be the 

 most irrational and worst part of the practice ; nor can 

 I agree with some from whom I have heard the asser- 

 tion, that an unsound horse may shift very well in the 

 field ; such may full soon prove a dangerous shift. 



For the reasons above stated, the unfitness of the 

 soil on the continent for summering horses abroad, it 

 is natural and rational enough for continental pro- 



