BAD FEEDERS. 159 



may account himself fortunate if he finds such a 

 horse with no greater drawback than marked 

 knees ; and, at a proper price, I should say, " buy 

 him." 



In giving such a recommendation, I hope my 

 reader will carry along with him the reflection, 

 that the object (and a novel one it is) of this 

 work is not to tell him what perfections in the 

 horse he is to look for, but what imperfections 

 may, under certain circumstances, be tolerated. 



BAD FEEDERS. 



As a joke, I might fairly say there are two 

 sorts of bad feeders ; that is, people who feed 

 their horses badly, and horses that often refuse 

 food when offered them. I sincerely wish ani- 

 mals had the same power of rejecting such 

 masters, as they have of rejecting such horses as 

 I allude to. 



Taking the thing in a general way, I have not 

 so great a dread of a light feeder as many persons 

 have ; in truth, I would prefer a delicate feeder 

 as a horse, to a really heavy grubber, as a com- 

 panion ; the one is, mostly at least, a vivacious, 

 light hearted, cheerful animal : the latter, only 

 begins to be alive with the near prospect of a 

 knife and fork in his hand ; and it will be mostly 

 found that very heavy feeders, of a biped kind. 



