24 STABLE ECONOMY. 



be numerous. They need not be so wide at bottom as at top. 

 When too narrovv^ they are always full of dirt. The grooves 

 may be four inches apart, 



A Causewayed Floor is the next best : and, when properly 

 laid, it is more durable than a freestone floor. Instead of the 

 usual blocks of stone, of all shapes and all sizes, some rising 

 and some sinking from the general level, the stones ought to 

 be square, and neatly joined, having no large intervals filled 

 with sand, w^hich alternately receives and rejects the urine, 

 keeping the air constantly saturated with its unwholesome 

 vapors. Causeway, however, is never so cleanly as freestone 

 flags, and it is difficult to get it sufficiently grooved. When 

 laid in the ordinary, anyhow way, a causewayed floor is 

 dirty, uneven, slippery, and easily torn up by the horses' feet, 

 or undermined by rats. Pebbles or Dutch clinkers are often 

 employed as stable flooring ; but I can say nothing about 

 them, for in this country their place is supplied by whin- 

 stone. 



In former times the stalls were laid with planks of oak, in 

 which holes were bored that led the urine into underground 

 drains. This mode of flooring has gone entirely out of use, 

 and there appears no reason for reviving it. The ancient 

 writers complain that it produced many accidents from the 

 horse slipping, and from the planks starting out of place. 



[The climate in Great Britain is so much damper than 

 that of America, that the objections there to a plank floor 

 will not hold good here. Lumber is also very much dearer 

 there than here, which is another serious objection with the 

 English to wooden floors. 



Earth Floors. — One of the best kinds of stable-floors, 

 where the soil is a dry one, is made of a composition of lime, 

 ashes, and clay, mixed up in equal parts into a mortar, and 

 spread twelve to fifteen inches deep over the surface of the 

 ground forming the bottom of the stables. It Avill dry in a 

 week or ten days, and makes a very smooth fine flooring, 

 particularly safe, easy, and agreeable for horses to stand on, 

 and free from all the objections of stone, brick, and wood ; 

 and were it not that a sharp-shod horse is apt to cut it up, 

 we should consider it as quite perfect. When the corks on 

 the shoes are sharp, more pains should be taken in littering 

 the floor to a greater depth, which would tend to its preserva- 

 tion. When much cut and worn, the flooring is easily broken 

 up with a pick-axe, softened with water, and again relaid. 

 The stables of Mr. Gibbons of New Jersey, are floored with 



