138 DADD’S VETERINARY MEDICINE AND SURGERY. 
tained that parsnips, carrots, turnips, and cabbage, which «ntuin 
from 80 to 90 per cent. of water, require over twice as much time ta 
digest as when the food is free from water. Cabbage, for example, 
requires twenty hours, and broiled beef-steak only eight, to digest. 
Turn a cow into a luxuriant pasture of grass or clover, and, after 
partaking of one or the other, she is liable to become “ blown” or 
“hoven”—tympanitic; the abdomen becomes enormously dis: 
tended with gas, (either carbonic acid gas, or sulphureted hydro 
gen,) and, unless the same be condensed or evacuated, ruptare and 
death are sure to follow. This imperfect digestion and consequent 
gencration of gus is due to the presence of vegetable fluids found in 
green fodder. Therefore, animals having weak digestive organs, 
predisposed to flatulency, should have the privilege of watering 
their own food with salivial fluid. The best dict for such an ani. 
mal would be “ dry feed,” composed of ground oats, cracked corn, 
“fine feed,” and a small quantity of sweet hay. On the other 
nand, a constipated state of the bowels always indicates coarss 
food; and in this view the English use chopped straw and coarse 
bran, with decided advantage. Animals should never be watered 
immediately before nor after meals, after the lapse of an hous 
from feeding time is the best. 
AS REGARDS THE QUANTITY OF FooD REQUIRED. 
The adult horse does not require so much of the flesh-making 
principle as the young and growing animal, but he seems to require 
1 greater variety. The adult merely requires enough to replac? 
the waste—the wear and tear of his system. If he obtains more 
than this, the surplus is either excreted from the body, or else 
stored up within the same in the form of fat; and every body 
knows that a fat horse or fat inan are not best adapted for a race 
aor hard labor, but of all others, (except those in a state of de- 
bility,) they are most subject to acute disease. With the young 
aud zrowing animal the case is different. Here we reqaire bone. 
mus.le, and nerve. Oats, corn, and pollard furnish the same. 
The colt obtains from its mother’s milk all the elements of its own 
organization in a concentrated form—all that seems necessary fur 
developing bodily proportions and hereditary traits; therefore, 
when weaned, the colt must be furnished with the same equivajenté 
in the form of fodder: ground oats wheat bran, and meal furnish 
