EAHLY WOBKINa OP CAST COLTS. 299 



to their wind, or, which is quite as likely, the food will 

 ferment in the stomach ; and this injudicious treatment, 

 arising from a total ignorance of the horse's nature, and 

 of the treatment which he requires, may terminate very 

 possibly in stomach-staggers and death. 



The working of colts at two or three years old is 

 quite as censurable as the working of children in facto- 

 ries at a tender age ; but the legislature has, in its wis- 

 dom, found it necessary to pass a law to prohibit the 

 working of children before they arrive at a certain age, 

 by which judicious provision the risk of deformity, 

 which would otherwise be incurred, is considerably di- 

 minished. I wish they would also pass a law to pro- 

 hibit the working of horses before they have attained 

 the age of four, at least, if not five, years old; for if such 

 a law were passed and rigidly enforced, it would not 

 only be the means of decreasing the sufferings of the 

 poor horse from many painful and chronic diseases, en- 

 gendered by working him too young, but it would also 

 be the means of greatly improving the quality of our 

 cart-horses generally, my opinion, strengthened by a 

 considerable experience, being that spavins, curby hocks, 

 navicular disease, roaring, malformation in the legs, 

 whether natural or caused by over-straining in work, 

 is frequently transmitted to the offspring. How fre- 

 quently we see, in large manufacturing towns, where 

 by working at the manufacture of the staple article- 

 whatever that may be the workman has to sit or stand 

 in one posture, until some particular deformity developes 



