138 HIGHWAYS AND HORSES. 



is to ruin and destroy in a great measure an animal 

 who is as yet uninjured and without blemish. Who- 

 ever does so is guilty of a very foolish act ; he is 

 behaving like the child who is anxious to observe 

 how the seeds he has planted in his strip of garden 

 ground are advancing, and digs them up in order to see 

 what progress they are making ; possibly if cast back 

 into the earth they may yet come up and to a certain 

 degree flourish, but not as they would have done had 

 they been left undisturbed. It is only patience and 

 care that is requisite, and it is these two things that 

 are wanting ; wisdom and carefulness being absent, the 

 mind of the child is uncontrolled, whilst impatience 

 suggests to him an act of stupidity. So it is with 

 horse-breeders and owners, they will not wait until 

 the animal is five years old, and yet in the end they 

 lose by their impatience. I will make this the subject 

 of a special chapter further on. All I can do now is 

 to beg and pray that my readers will never use a horse 

 and subject him to regular work until he has passed 

 his fifth year, 



Mr. James Payn, in a volume of essays lately 

 published, commences his first chapter with a descrip- 

 tion of horses relieved from the burden of their 

 harness, which is rather amusing and decidedly well 

 written, although he commits the very serious fault, 

 which I attribute entirely to ignorance, of saying that 

 horses are not sagacious. In my opinion there is only 

 one animal that equals the horse in intelligence, and 

 that is the dog. If horses, owing to the fact that they 

 are used merely as beasts of burden, should display no 

 great intelligence, it is because their brains have not 

 been sufficiently educated, and consequently they have 

 had no opportunity of exhibiting any particular clever- 



