38 THE COMMON COLICS OF THE HORSE 



of colic by far the greater part will be found under this 

 heading. 



The small stomach of the horse offers a fair reason 

 to suppose that it should be often filled during the day, 

 in order that the amount of ingesta required by his 

 voluminous intestines may be adequately provided. 

 Observation of the horse's natural habits sufficiently 

 point this out, and yet how often we see this teaching of 

 nature grossly ignored. Percivall, with his usual terse- 

 ness of argument, suggests that the natural habits, when 

 changed for new ones, by confirmation of time and usage 

 come to appropriately take the place of those ordinarily 

 natural. He is evidently referring to the ' three meals a 

 day ' system of feeding the horse, which custom has come 

 to substitute for the animal's constant grazing when at 

 large and at pasture. Probably, if man were content to 

 allow even these necessary three meals, and at regularly 

 fixed hours, cases of colic would be far less numerous. 

 Such, however, is not the case. Percivall himself goes 

 on to remark : ' How often do we see horses, hunters 

 especially, taken to work at eight or nine o'clock in the 

 morning, and not returned to their stables before five, six, 

 or seven o'clock at night.' He then proceeds to point 

 out that the well-bred horse will endure this long fasting, 

 and subsequent repletion, with comparative impunity ; 

 that coarse-bred ones and cart-horses will not, hut suffer, as a 

 result, from stomach troubles.'^ As an example of the way 

 in which the animal's constitution is sometimes abused in 

 this respect, I cannot do better than quote from a former 

 article of mine referring to the feeding of horses in my 

 own district •.'^ 



' Whether the horse be in hard, every-day work, or 



' The italics are mine. — H. C. R. 



^ Journal of Comparative Pathology and Therapeutics, vol. xiii., p. 27. 



