PROTECTION BY THE COAT. 35 



remove dandruff and loose hairs from the coat ; the less a horse 

 is groomed, the better will he stand cold. When the coat 

 becomes soaked with water, its conductivity is increased, 

 probably, at least twenty times, as we may infer from a com- 

 parison between the conducting powers of water, wool, and air. 

 Horses which have long coats, and which remain in the open 

 during cold weather, suffer very little from lying out on dry 

 snow ; for the coat is such a bad conductor that it allows the 

 heat of the body to melt only a small amount of the snow with 

 which the coat is in contact, and consequently the portion of 

 the coat that is next the skin remains dry. The skin of the 

 horse, like other kinds of leather, conducts heat far better than 

 hair. 



Besides protecting the body from cold by being a bad 

 conductor of heat, the coat guards it from chill, by reason 

 of its great capacity for absorbing and retaining moisture. 

 Therefore, when a horse with a long coat perspires freely after 

 exercise, the sweat, by the action of the heat of the body, 

 quickly leaves the surface of the skin and accumulates near 

 the ends of the hairs, from whence it evaporates slowly, and 

 consequently the animal does not run much risk of getting 

 chilled. With a short coated or clipped horse in similar 

 circumstances, the sweat would be more or less in contact with 

 the skin, which would cool much more rapidly, on account of 

 the sweat (practically water) being a far better conductor of 

 heat than either hair or the air that is imprisoned between 

 the fibres of a long coat. If, however, we placed a rug over 

 the animal, the sweat would become speedily transferred to 

 the woollen material, which, like the outer portion of the hair 

 of a long coated horse, would help to prevent chill by giving 

 off the moisture slowly. In our own cases, a flannel shirt acts 

 in a similar manner. 



The efficiency of the undipped coat as a protection against 

 cold is well shown by the immunity from chill displayed by 



3* 



