194 GENERAL TREATMENT OF HORSES. 



must be avoided, until such obstructions are re- 

 moved, which must be the work of time. It is in 

 vain to attempt to hurry a horse in this state into 

 condition, but the first step taken should be to have 

 him clipped, for reasons which we shall presently 

 give. Long-continued slow exercise is the chief 

 agent in hardening his muscles, and strengthening^ 

 his organs of respiration ; but all galloping when 

 in the state in which he will be for the first two 

 months, to get off his flesh, is very highly to be 

 reprobated, as his legs will surely suffer by it, if 

 nothing else does. Two light doses of physic may 

 be useful to him, if he have had none given him at 

 grass ; and care should be taken not to use the 

 brush to his coat till the month of November be 

 passed, in case he should not be clipped. Again, 

 veterinary science has informed us, that danger 

 always accrues to horses in the vicissitudes of heat 

 and cold, from one state to its opposite ; but more 

 from the latter to the former, as an excitant to 

 general inflammation. Horses taken from grass, 

 then, should be put into very cool stables, and the 

 fewer in one stable the better, for at least the first 

 month. Windows should be left open day and 

 night, merely taking the precaution of coarse mat- 

 ting, or any thing else that will stop the entrance 

 of flies ; and nothing does that better than mat- 

 ting, frequently saturated with water. Having 

 been clipped, and kept out several hours in the day 

 in slow work (which, by the way, grooms are too 

 often shy of,) increasing his pace gradually as his 

 condition progresses, the grass-fed hunter may be 



