Horses. 



67 



keep. Out at grass a horse becomes wild rather than 

 vicious, and mere wildness is easily curable by gentleness 

 and patience. Tied up in a stable, with plenty of hay and 

 corn, his system accumulates the electricity of irritability 

 which ought to have been regularly expended in work, and 

 it explodes in dangerous violence. Four days' idleness in 



Horses in Freedom. 



Pen drawing by D. Munro, after the etching by J. Veyrassat. 



an inn-stable, during wet weather, cost me the most valu- 

 able horse I ever possessed. On the fifth day no man 

 could ride him, and no man was ever able to ride him 

 afterwards. A black Irish horse, who served me well 

 during a year, and was an excellent leaper, was suddenly 

 lost to me in the same way, and the same thing occurred 

 with a powerful Scotch Galloway. Most men who have 



I begged the late Lord Hawke, who was the best rider, or one of the three 

 best, I ever knew, to make a trial of him, but the results were the same as with 

 myself and the rough-riders, and the verdict, " Nothing to be made of him." 



