60 THE FAMILY HORSE. 



GEOOMING. 



A horse which is kept in the stable when it is not at work, 

 requires frequent gi-ooming or currying. "It is to the stabled 

 horse," says Youatt, " highly fed, and little or irregularly worked, 

 that grooming is of the highest consequence. Good rubbing with 

 the brush or the currycomb opens the pores of the skin, circulates 

 the blood to the extremities of the body, produces free and healthy 

 perspiration, and stands in the room of exercise. No horse will carry 

 a fine coat, without either unnatural heat or dressing. They both 

 effect the same purpose, but the first does it at the expense of health 

 and strength ; whUe the second, at the same time that it produces a 

 glow on the skin and a determination of the blood to it, rouses all 

 the energies of the frame. It would be well for the proprietor of the 

 horse if he were to insist, and to see that his orders are really obey- 

 ed, that the fine coat in which he and his groom so much delight, is 

 produced by honest nibbing, and not by a heated stable and thick 



Fig. 42. — CDBETCOMB. 



clothing, and, most of all, not by stimulating or injurious spices. 

 The horse should be regularly dressed every day, in addition to 

 the grooming that is necessary after work." To which Henry 

 William Herbert adds : " It is true in a measure, that the neces- 

 sity of regular dressing, wisping, currying, brushing, and hard rub- 

 bing is far greater in the case of highly pampered horses, fed in the 

 most stimulating manner, principally on grain, kept in hot stables, 

 always a little above their work, and ready at aU times to jump out 

 of their skins from the exuberance of their animal spirits ; yet it is 

 necessary to aU housed and stabled horses ; and the farmer, no less 

 than the owner of fast trotters, will find his advantage in having hia 

 horse curried and washed before feeding in the morning, in the in- 



