384: THE HORSE. 



their excrements and nrine, the latter replete with pungent 

 ammonia. 



In extreme cases, the consequences of this exclusion is blind- 

 ness, and the almost instantaneous generation of that deadliest of 

 equine scourges, the glanders ; which a few years since was so 

 fatal, in many of the French cavalry stables, that the loss of 

 chargers by it, in many years, exceeded tifty per cent, of all the 

 horses in garrison, in certain districts. On one occasion, on 

 board ship, in the ill-fated Quiberon expedition, during the war 

 of the French revolution, the hatches having been necessarily 

 closed on account of bad weather; this disease broke out 

 with such incredible fury, either spontaneously generated, or 

 what is more probable — communicated to the rest from some 

 one infected animal, in which the undetected symptoms had 

 been aggravated into sudden virulence by the condition of the 

 air in the closely packed hold, that nearly the whole number 

 of the troop and artillery horses of the expeditionary forces 

 perished. 



Again, because at times, when he is seeking to rest, the 

 horse likes a darkened chamber, stables have been too often 

 built, with scarcely any provision for the admission of light, 

 without which no stable can be kept either clean or wholesome, 

 much less cheerful. 



And the horse is, above all things, a sociable and cheerful 

 animal, becoming excessively attached to his comrades of his 

 own family, or, if deprived of their society, to any dog, cat, 

 goat, or even poultry, which may chance to share his confine- 

 ment. 



If a horse be shut up alone, in a loose box, or hut, which 

 has a window or upper j)art of the door open to the exterior air, 

 he will be constantly seen putting out his head to seek for 

 amusement, by looking at what is passing around him. 



It is the height of cruelty to exclude the light from a poor 

 animal, which is thus reduced to a worse condition than that of 

 the State prisoner of the present day ; whose worst punishment, 

 for obstinate contumacy, consists in immurement in a darkened 

 dungeon. 



How fatal may be the effects of such confinement in dark- 

 ness, to animals, is curiously illustrated by the story of the poor 



