THE SKIN AND ITS DISEASES. 473 



Management op the Feet. — This is the ouly division of stable manage- 

 ment that remains to be considered, and one sadly neglected by the carter and 

 groom. The feet should be carefully examined every morning, for the shoes 

 may be loose and the horse would have been stopped in the middle of his work •, 

 or the clenches may be raised, and endanger the wounding of his legs ; or the 

 shoe may begin to press upon the sole or the heel, and bruises of the sole, or corn, 

 may be the result ; and, the horse having stood so long in the stable, every little 

 increase of heat in the foot, or lameness, will be more readily detected, and 

 serious disease may often be prevented. 



When the horse comes in at night, and after the harness has been taken off 

 and stowed away, the heels should be well brushed out. Hand-rubbing will be 

 preferable to washing, especially in the agricultural horse, whose heels, covered 

 with long hair, can scarcely be dried again. If the dirt is suffered to accumu- 

 late in that long hair, the heels will become sore, and grease will follow ; and if 

 the heels are washed, and particularly during the winter, grease will result from 

 the coldness occasioned by the slow evaporation of the moisture. The feet 

 should be stopped — even the feet of the farmer's horse, if he remains in the 

 stable. Very little clay should be used in the stopping, for it will get hard and 

 press upon the sole. Cowdung is the best stopping to preserve the feet cool and 

 elastic ; but, before the stopping is applied, the picker should be run round the 

 whole of the foot, between the shoe and the sole, in order to detect any stone 

 that may have insinuated itself there, or a wound on any other part of the 

 sole. For the hackney and hunter, stopping is indispensable. After several 

 days' hard work it will afford very great relief to take the shoes off, having put 

 plenty of litter under the horse, or to turn him, if possible, into a loose-box ; 

 and the shoes of every horse, whether hardly worked or not, should be removed 

 or changed once in every three weeks. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

 THE SKIN AND ITS DISEASES. 



The skin of the horse resembles in construction that of other animals. 

 It consists of three layers, materially differing in their structure and office. 

 Externally is the cuticle, — the epidermis or scarf-skin — composed of innu- 

 merable thin transparent scales, and extending over the whole animal. If the 

 scarf-skin is examined by means of a microscope, the existence of scales like those 

 of a fish, is readily detected. In the action of a blister they are raised from the 

 skin beneath in the form of pellucid bladders, and, in some diseases, as in mange, 

 they are thrown off in hard, dry, white scales, numerous layers of which are 

 placed one above another. In every part of the body the scarf-skin is permeated 

 by innumerable pores, some of which permit the passage of the hair — through 

 others the perspirable matter finds a passage — others are perforated by tubes 

 through which various unctuous secretions make their escape, while, through a 

 fourth variety, numerous fluids and gases are inhaled. It is destitute of nerves 

 and blood-vessels, and its principal use seems to be to protect the cutis from 

 injury, and to restrain and moderate its occasional morbid sensibility. 



There is at all times a singular change taking place in this outer covering of 

 the animal. There is a constant alteration and renewal of every part of it, but it 

 adheres to the true skin through the medium of the pores, and also numerous 



