352 CLIPPING, SINGEING, AND TRIMMING. 



friction or contact, than if the hair had been left in its natural 

 state, or even moderately long. This fact has often been im- 

 pressed upon me, when, for purposes of coolness, in tropical 

 climates, I have had the hair of my head cut as close as 

 possible with a barber's machine. On such occasions, I always 

 found that if a fly alighted on my head and walked over the 

 short hairs, it caused great irritation ; although such an 

 occurrence would probably have been unnoticed by me, if my 

 hair had been at its usual length. The frequent friction 

 which the hair of the legs and especially of the pasterns 

 endures from objects which it meets when a horse is at work, 

 is no doubt sufficient in many cases to bring on cracked heels 

 and mud fever. Hence the reasonableness of abstaining from 

 running the clipping machine over the legs and that portion 

 of the back on which the saddle rests. Also, the ends of 

 the clipped hairs, owing to their blunt shape and want of 

 pliability, cannot lie in such close contact with each other 

 as undipped ones would do ; and they accordingly " stare," 

 more or less, and cause the coat to be penetrated compara- 

 tively easily by water, dust and other foreign bodies. From 

 the nature of its action, singeing is less open to the objections 

 in question than clipping. The best means for reducing the 

 weight of the coat is evidently hand-rubbing (p. 326), which 

 may not always be sufficient for the purpose in view, 

 especially when the coat is heavy and strong, and the groom 

 over-worked or lazy. Even when a coat which has been 

 subjected to a course of good hand-rubbing, appears some- 

 what longer than if it had been clipped, we must not take 

 for granted that the reduction of weight has been less ; be- 

 cause hand-rubbing acts more by thinning the coat, than 

 by reducing its length. Even in a moderately cold climate 

 like that of England, daily good hand -rubbing of the 

 body, which entails more labour than could be spared in 

 ordinary stables, would be sufficient for reducing the coats 



