198 GENERAL TREATMENT OF HORSES. 



space which large studs would occupy ; but every 

 sportsman should have boxes about his premises, 

 and his hunters should be invariably put into them 

 for two or three days after work. To their general 

 use there is one objection, although not a serious 

 one. Horses always lying loose are apt to refuse 

 to lie down in stalls, when removed to premises 

 where boxes cannot be had, but they become re- 

 conciled to them after a few days. It is, however, 

 the opinion of a celebrated sportsman, that if a 

 hunter should have stood his work ten seasons 

 being always tied up, he would have stood it twelve 

 if he had lain loose. 



On the subject of warm stables, the writer may 

 quote the following passage from his work on the 

 Condition of Hunters. After proving, by the fact 

 of the horse degenerating in all cold countries, that 

 warmth is congenial to his existence, he thus pro- 

 ceeds : — " They who attend to such matters will 

 find, that the constitution and habit of a horse un- 

 dergo a change when kept in a warm stable, fa- 

 vourable, no doubt, to the work he has to perform 

 as a hunter in the stable of a hard- riding man. He 

 is not that o:ross animal which he mis^ht otherwiss 

 be, if a hard feeder, and kept in a state more nearly 

 approaching to a state of nature. This we may 

 attribute to the increase of insensible perspiration 

 occasioned by increased circulation, whereby the 

 grosser particles of the body fly off and are got rid 

 of. In this state he would bear some comparison 

 with a well-fed English farmer, when put to per- 

 form feats of activity with a man of more refined 



