SUMMERING THE HUNTER. 177 



In fact, many horses (and we could name some well 

 known hunters) cannot reach the ground at all 

 with their mouths, unless it be by the painful posi- 

 tion of placing one fore-foot close to their mouth, 

 and the other even with the hinder-legs ; and con- 

 sequently their owners have not been able to turn 

 them out, had they been inclined h> do so. 



The principal objection to summering a horse 

 abroad, consists in the danger we expose him to by 

 the violent change from a stable at the temperature 

 of 63^ (the common one of hunting stables,) and 

 the addition of warm clothing, to a bed upon the 

 cold ground on a wet night ; or, which often hap- 

 pens in the month of May, to the influence of sharp 

 frost ; all this, also, when the animal has scarcely 

 any coat on his back to provide against the effects 

 of bad weather; and with a skin highly porous, 

 from frequent perspiration in his exercise and work, 

 and long-continued friction in the stable. As well 

 might we expect to find animals and plants that 

 can sustain the heat of the torrid, and the cold of 

 the frigid zone, as horses to bear those extremes 

 with impunity ! On the contrary, it is the con- 

 firmed opinion of most veterinary surgeons, that 

 more hunters have been ruined by becoming roar- 

 ers, broken-winded, or blind, from this cause, than 

 from any other to which they are subjected ; and 

 they are backed in their opinion by reason. For 

 it is not necessary that the newly-turned-out hun- 

 ter should be exposed to either a wet or a frosty 

 night, to produce disordered functions ; the com- 

 mon exhalations from the ground in the evening, 



