THE HORSE IN SICKNESS AND DISEASE 439 



of animal glycerine to a quarter of a pint of water, 

 and the state of the general health attended to. The 

 system, however, must not be reduced, or depletory 

 measures resorted to. A drink composed of the liquor 

 arsenicalis half an ounce, tincture of muriate of iron an 

 ounce, and water half a pint, should be given once a day. 

 Bufc never forget that leaving Nature's covering on the heels, 

 merely — if the master is so fantastical as to require it — 

 trimming off the ends of the fetlock, and diligent cleaning, 

 first with cold water, then drying them thoroughly with 

 more than two cloths, and lastly, diligent hand-rubbing, 

 will prevent, in animals thus stripped and exposed, a return 

 of chapped heels. Where there is a marked predisposition, 

 from light colour and tender skin, to this and similar dis- 

 orders, after the drying and rubbing already directed, smear 

 the heels with glycerine, and stop the feet now and then, 

 in cold weather, with corroborative stopping of tar and 

 linseed meal wetted with chloride of zinc. We have found 

 one of the convenient felt pads, slipped into the shoe, 

 smeared with thin tar, after the washing with the white 

 vitriol, a good preventive. 



Mayhew pleads so eloquently against the practice of 

 denuding the fetlocks of their ornament, that we are sure 

 the reader will be pleased with his earnest appeal. He 

 says : " The liability to disorder, induced by removal of the 

 natural covering, exemplifies the folly of those practices 

 which have lately become so very fashionable as, at the 

 present time, to be almost universal. But there has always 

 appeared to exist in the human mind a restless desire to 

 improve the beauty of the horse. Now the tail has been 

 docked ; then the ears have been cut. A short space prior 

 to these amendments the skin was tampered with to pro- 

 duce a star, as a white spot upon the forehead was termed. 

 At the passing hour, almost every man who owns a horse 

 must have the body clipped or singed. The length of hair 

 is given in this climate as a necessary provision. Nature 

 never forms anything without its use, though man, in his 

 ignorance, may not always be able to comprehend her 

 intention. Were the legs of horses allowed to retain that 

 adornment which Nature gave, and were the parts not 

 shorn of their shp.ggy beauty — were men not inclined to 

 confound the different breeds of horses, and because the 

 thoroughbred has clean legs, to imagine the cart horse 



