HORSES AND HOUNDS. 27 



CHAPTER IV. 



Eailways not injurious to the demand for draught horses — Comparative safety 

 of the coach and the rail — Experience in coach accidents — Proper feed- 

 ing for draught horses — Objections to the old hay-lofts — Different quali- 

 ties of hav, proper season for making it — Objection to haj-making 

 machines — Improvements introduced by Lord Ducie — Manure — Plough 

 horses, and their hours of work — Difference of diet according to occupa- 

 tion — Value of wheat and other provisions, and of the manui'e. 



It might have been supposed that the introduction of rail- 

 ways would have superseded or materially diminished the use 

 of horses generally employed for draught purposes ; but, taking 

 into account the number of cabs and omnibus horses now em- 

 ployed to ply to and from railway stations, not only in the 

 great metropolis where the increase has been enormous during 

 the last few years, but also in the rural districts and large 

 towns ; railway travelling has not had this effect, but, on the 

 contrary, has increased the demand for beasts of this descrip- 

 tion. There are still to be found some four-horse coaches in 

 localities where railroads have not yet been formed. The 

 flourishing whips of former days are now forced, like the Red 

 Indians of North America (by the pressure of the steam en- 

 gine or puffing Billys, as a coachman used to call them,) into 

 the far west, there to subsist on short fares and short commons, 

 until, by some branch line, their vocation will be entirely gone. 

 Notwithstanding the number of coaches formerly on the great 

 roads leading north, south, east, and west from London, and the 

 heavy loads occasionally carried on their roofs, few accidents, 

 comparatively speaking, occurred, and they were very seldom 

 attended with fatal consequences. A crash, however, on a rail- 

 way is a different affair, and the loss of life and limb on several 

 occasions has been very great. During twenty years' travelling 

 by coach I never witnessed any serious accident, not even to 

 the breaking of a limb ; but I have been present at two or three 

 turns out, though not turns over. Upon one occasion a fast 

 young whip on the western road deposited his outside passen- 

 gers in a horse pond, but as it happened in the month of July, 

 and in turning into the inn yard where the coach stopped to 

 refresh its passengers, they were soon accommodated by the 

 attentive landlady with a change of garments until their own 

 were dried by the kitchen fire, and every attention having been 

 paid to the comfort of the inner as well as the outward man, 

 they proceeded on their journey in high good humour. I have 

 seen also the outsides, by the coach being driven rather too 



