88 STABLE BUILDING AND STABLE FITTING. 



Harness. 



Fig. 63. 



Harness 

 brackets. 



of horses. These, as well as the horses, are sometimes fitted 

 with casters for the convenience of moving about. 



Bits, curbs, spurs, and the smaller ornamental details of 

 harness, especially those of steel, are best preserved from damp 



in glass cases lined with cloth. In 

 some establishments, as in the Queen's 

 stables, whole suites of harness are thus 

 provided for. They may be fitted up 

 over the fireplaces or in recesses, if 

 possible upon an inner wall, to secure 

 them from the action of damp. 



A variety of the most modern brackets 

 for riding and driving harness are ex- 

 hibited on Plates 29 and 30, and more 

 fully described in the Description of 

 Plates. They are made of enamelled 

 iron, and to admit the freest ventilation 

 through the several parts. These can 

 be fastened to the matched boarded 

 lining of the harness room, and should bear beneath them the 

 names of the several horses to which the harness belongs. 

 Coach-houses, fhe principal fittings of a coach-house are confined to its 

 warming, . ^^ccmWi^ apparatus, which depends to some extent on the 

 arrangement of the several buildings, but is most generally 

 accomplished by means of hot-water pipes in connection with 

 the harness-room boiler. Coach-houses should be kept to a 

 level temperature, as variations of heat and cold are as injurious 

 to varnish as the damp is to the lining and leather of carriages 

 and harness. A stove, as shown on Plate 8, may be made to 

 perform the double duty of heating both the harness-room and 

 coach-house j or, if the plan does not admit of this arrange- 

 ment, the latter may be warmed by an arterial circulation 

 carried beneath the floor, or concentrated in a nest of pipes 

 from the boiler of an open grate, as on Plates 10 and 11, or 

 from a closed stove. 



