196 STABLE ECONOMY. 



to work, and the other refusing to eat. Once or twice a day 

 they rejoin each other for a short time, in order that the foal 

 may empty the udder, and not be suddenly deprived of its 

 natural food. When the foal is removed all at once, as by 

 death, the mare's udder should be stripped once or twice a 

 day, for perhaps a week ; but at no time need it be quite 

 drained. Spare diet, harder work, or milk physic, will di- 

 minish the secretion of milk, and one or another should be 

 employed, if the mare must give up nursing while her milk is 

 abundant. 



In connexion with foals, I will just observe here, though 

 out of place, that the young animal should be well fed from 

 the day he is born. A starved foal or colt is almost never 

 well made when he arrives at maturity. He is always, as 

 stablemen say, a weed; and though bad shapes, such as light 

 carcass and spare quarters, are not supposed to have any con- 

 nexion with the feeding, I am well persuaded that a poor diet 

 is a common cause of them. 



COMPOSITION OF FOOD. 



The articles used as food for horses have been submitted 

 to chymical examination, with the purpose of ascertaining the 

 amount of nutritive matter yielded by each in proportion to its 

 bulk. 



The Nutritive Matter of plants consists of starch, sugar, 

 gluten, and extract. These four substances exist together in 

 varying proportions. In some vegetables, as carrots, tbe 

 sugar is most abundant ; in many, as in the different kinds of 

 grain, starch predominates. Gluten abounds in grain and 

 pulse, while it is deficient in the most of grasses. Extract is 

 wanting in grain and several of the roots, while beans, peas, 

 herbage, plants, and grasses, possess a considerable quantity. 



It is not known whether a certain quantity of any one of 

 these substances will produce the same effect as an equal 

 quantity of any other; starch and sugar, though both nutritive 

 articles, are very different in many respects, and it is not like- 

 ly that the one can perform all the functions of the other. 

 But this subject, so far as I know, has not been put to trial. 

 I am disposed to believe that each of the nutritive matters 

 performs its own duty ; that life may be maintained tor a time 

 by any one of them ; that certain combinations will produce 

 results different from other combinations ; and that it is very 

 desirable to know the power of each individual substance, and 



