40 THE horse's foot, 



inquire among horse-masters in general, whether they have 

 ever been obliged to part with a horse for lameness, the cause 

 of which they could never distinctly trace ; the answer they 

 will assuredly obtain, coupled with the foregoing observa- 

 tions, I will venture to hope, may lead some of them, at least, 

 to suspect that the time-honored stall may very fairly be 

 charged with a considerable share in the mischief. 



The real fact is, that nothing short of a miracle can save a 

 horse, which is habitually confined day after day to one spot, 

 from most destructive changes in the delicate and' complicated, 

 mechanism of the foot. The greatest amount of care and 

 attention that we can bestow upon the form and fastening of 

 the shoe, will avail him little, if the foot to which it is at- 

 tached be not permitted to move. Frequent and regular 

 motion is absolutely essential to a sound and healthy condition 

 of the horse's foot ; and any expectation of retaining per- 

 fectly sound feet with stalls and rack-chains involves an 

 impossibility, and never will be realized. 



It is sometimes alleged as an objection to loose boxes, that 

 they offer great facilities to gross-feeding horses to eat their 

 beds ; but as this evil naturally suggests its own remedy, I 

 should not have noticed it, except for the purpose of calling 

 attention to a particular form of muzzle that I invented some 

 years ago, and have found to be eiTectual in preventing this 

 evil, (for a very great evil it unquestionably is,) while it 

 secures to the poor beast his free breathing.* 



The two muzzles in common use are extremely inconve- 

 nient and objectionable. A horse soon learns to eat through 

 the open one ; while the closed one, usually called a setting 

 muzzle, is so insufferably hot and suffocating to wear, that it 

 amounts in fact to an instrument of torture. 



Having said thus much about keeping the feet in a sound 

 and healthy condition, it may be well to inquire what precise 

 meaning attaches to the expression " sound feet," as it is met 

 with in common use ; because perhaps there is no word in 

 the English language which, in its true and legitimate signi- 

 fication implies so much, and in its almost universal accepta- 

 tion means so little, as the word sound, when applied to horses' 

 feet. The great latitude extended to the meaning of words 

 in horse-dealing transactions has shorn the one in question 

 of every attribute which gave it value, and has reduced it to 

 a miserable cheat, conveying no other guarantee than that 



• Pages 65, 66, figs. 19 and 20. 



