SHORTENING THE COAT. 351 



which are required to be in high working efficiency, or which 

 are kept in warm stables. In these circumstances, the warmer 

 the climate or season, the greater is the benefit obtained from 

 shortening the coat. If clothing cannot be provided in cold 

 weather, as might be the case on some poor farms, the coat 

 should not be removed. 



The wearing of a heavy coat by a horse which is doing 

 severe work, distresses him out of all proportion to the 

 amount of " dead weight " he carries ; because the moisture- 

 retaining power of the coat is so great, that when the animal 

 sweats, evaporation will go on slowly, and consequently, as 

 long as the labour continues, the lungs will fail to obtain 

 adequate relief from the action of the skin, and the amount 

 of evaporation will be insufficient to keep down the in- 

 ternal temperature to a healthy limit. Hence, fatigue thus 

 induced, will be accompanied by more or less feverishness 

 and will be of a more distressing nature, than if the 

 coat was short. It is instructive to note, that the amount 

 of perspiration on the surface of the body is not a correct 

 measure of the amount of evaporation that is taking place, 

 as we see in cases of men respectively exposed to dry heat 

 and moist heat (p. 17). We may therefore reasonably 

 assume that the fact of a thick equine coat being wet with 

 sweat, is no proof that evaporation of perspiration is pro- 

 ceeding more rapidly from it, than from the thin coat of 

 another horse which has scarcely "turned a hair." I have 

 seen some good instances of extraordinary " reversal of form " 

 in racehorses caused by clipping. 



The only objection I see to clipping as a means of 

 shortening the coat, is that it leaves the ends of the hair in 

 a truncated, instead of a finely pointed condition, and that it 

 diminishes the pliability of the hairs. Consequently, skin 

 which is covered by short-cut hair is, as most persons know 

 in their own cases, far more liable to become irritated by 



