GROOMING. 461 



colour. The constant reflection from a white wall, and especially if the sun 

 shines into the stable, will be as injurious to the eye as the sudden changes 

 from darkness to light. The perpetual slight excess of stimulus will do as 

 much mischief as the occasional hut more violent one when the animal is taken 

 from a kind of twilight to the blaze of day. The colour of the stable, there- 

 fore, should depend on the quantity of light. Where much can be admitted, 

 the walls should be of a grey hue. Where darkness would otherwise prevail, 

 frequent whitewashing may in some degree dissipate the gloom. 



For another reason it will be evident that the stable should not possess too 

 glaring a light : it is the resting-place of the horse. The work of the 

 farmer's horse, indeed, is confined principally to the day. The hour of exer- 

 tion having passed, the animal returns to his stable to feed and to repose, and 

 the latter is as necessary as the former, in order to prepare him for renewed 

 work. Something approaching to the dimness of twilight is requisite to 

 induce the animal to compose himself to sleep. This half-light more particu- 

 larly suits horses of heavy work, and who draw almost as much by the weight 

 of carcass which they can throw into the collar, as by the degree of muscular 

 energy of which they are capable. In the quietness of a dimly-lighted stable 

 they obtain repose, and accumulate flesh and fat. Dealers are perfectly aware 

 of this. They have their darkened stables, in which the young horse, with 

 little or no exercise, and fed upon mashes and ground corn, is made up for 

 sale. The round and plump appearance, however, which may delude the un- 

 wary, soon vanishes with altered treatment, and the animal is found to be unfit 

 for hard work, and predisposed to many an inflammatory disease. The circum- 

 stances, then, under which a stable somewhat darkened may be allowed, will 

 be easily determined by the owner of the horse ; but, as a general rule, dark 

 stables are unfriendly to cleanliness, and the frequent cause of the vice of 

 starting, and of the most serious diseases of the eyes. 



GROOMING. 



Of this much need not be said to the agriculturist, since custom, and, appa- 

 rently without ill effect, has allotted so little of the comb and brush to the 

 farmer's horse. The animal that is worked all day, and turned out at night, 

 requires little more to be done to him than to have the dirt brushed off his 

 limbs. Regular grooming, by Tendering his skin more sensible to the altera- 

 tion of temperature, and the inclemency of the weather, would be preju- 

 dicial. The horse that is altogether turned out needs no grooming. The 

 dandriff or scurf which accumulates at the roots of the hair, is a provision of 

 nature to defend him from the wind and the cold. 



It is to the stabled horse, highly fed, and little or irregularly worked, that 

 grooming is of so much consequence. Good rubbing with the brush or the 

 currycomb opens the pores of the skin, circulates the blood to the extremities of 

 the body, produces free and healthy perspiration, and stands in the room of 

 exercise. No horse will carry a fine coat without either unnatural heat or 

 dressing. They both effect the same purpose ; they both increase the insensible 

 perspiration ; but the first does it at the expense of health and strength, while 

 the second, at the same time that it produces a glow on the skin, and a deter- 

 mination of blood to it, rouses all the energies of the frame. It would be well 

 for the proprietor of the horse if he were to insist — and to see that his orders 

 are really obeyed — that the fine coat in which he and his groom so much 

 delight, is produced by honest rubbing, and not by a heated stable and thick 

 clothing, and most of all, not by stimulating or injurious spices. The horse 

 should be regularly dressed every day, in addition to the grooming that is neces- 

 sary after work. 



