430 THE HORSE. 



from the pipe the whip is not in hand. Horses will sometimes 

 lift the latch of a stable-door, or a paddock-gate, when they 

 want to get out. Instinct would teach them to kick and get 

 out by violence -, and, as all the reason in the world would not 

 teach even man himself the use of a latch before he had seen 

 it in operation, or having been told its use, we must infer that 

 in all such instances the horse raises the latch from having 

 previously observed the result. It is mere imitation, and in 

 comparison with the actual efforts of reason, we may say with 

 Holofernes 



" Imitari, is nothing : so doth the hound his master, the ape his 

 keeper, the tired horse his rider." 



(Love's Labour's Lost, Act II. Scene 4.) 



In the following anecdote related by Lord Brougham, one cannot 

 suppose that the disinterested conduct of the horse was other- 

 wise than the effect of some ingenious training. " A horse, 

 belonging to a smuggler at Dover," he says, Cf used to be laden 

 with run spirits, and sent on the road unattended to reach the 

 rendezvous. When he descried a soldier, he would jump off 

 the highway and hide in a ditch, and, if discovered, would fight 

 for his load." 



The ordinary food of horses in Britain consists chiefly of 

 oats and pulse. They are very fond of the seeds of darnel, 

 and are remarkable for eating the aconite and common hemlock 

 without injury. Dr. Anderson, who devoted much time to 

 agriculture, cultivated furze as winter fodder for horses -, and 

 Evelyn assures us that no provender makes them so hardy as 

 the young topping of furze, and which when bruised, he adds, 

 will strangely recover and fatten a lean horse. M. Pirolle, author 

 of Le Bon Jardinier (1822), says, that in many parts of France, 

 particularly Normandy, furze is bruised in a cider-mill and then 

 given to horses with advantage. The leaves of the birch afford 

 them good fodder. Loudon, in his Arboretum Britannicum, says, 

 that " in some places horses are fed entirely on willow leaves, 

 whether green or dry, from the end of August to November ; 

 and it is stated that those which are thus fed will travel twenty 



