THEIR FEED AND THEIR FEET. 



105 



Hussars, who tells us that a horse should live frorri 

 thirty-five to forty years, and live actively and usefully 

 during three-fourths of this period. "All author- 

 ities," he says, " now admit that animals should live 

 five times as long as it takes them to reach maturity. 

 A dog, which is at its full growth when between two 

 and three years old, is very aged at twelve ' years. 

 Horses do not, unless their growth is forced, reach 

 their full prime until they are seven or eight years 

 old, which by the same law leaves them to live some 

 thirty years longer. When these facts are kept in 

 mind, together with these other facts that three- 

 fourths of our horses die or are destroyed under 

 twelve years old, that horses are termed aged at six " 

 [he should have said eight], "old at ten, very old 

 when double that number of year ( s, and that few of 

 them but are laid up from work a dozen times a year, 

 .... the viciousness of a system which entails such 

 misery and destruction of life can not be too strongly 

 commented upon." If we take the age of three 

 years as that at which horses begin to work, and 

 twelve as that at which they are worn out, it follows 

 that the period of their efficiency is shorter by at 

 least fourteen years than it should be. In other 

 words, the nation has to buy three horses when it 

 ought to buy only one, and thus upwards of £200,000,- 

 000 are spent every twenty-one years in the purchase 

 of horses when £68,000,000 ought to suffice. The 

 loss, therefore, to the nation is at least £135,000,000 

 in twenty-one years. 



If this were all, the question would surely be most 



5* 



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