GREASE. 243 
Grease is banished from every decent stable; it may, however, be occa- 
sionally encountered in situations very much secluded ; there yet remain 
places whence so foul a disgrace is never absent. The wretched animals 
which are employed in brick-yards, in dust-carts, and in drawing canal 
boats are hardly ever free from this loathsome disorder. These creatures 
labor incessantly, and are removed far from the wholesome check which 
brutality receives from public opinion; they are resigned to the mercies 
of men who, as a class, are certainly not the most refined, and are seldom 
inconvenienced by any excess of feeling. The places, not stables, into 
which the miserable quadrupeds are thrust can rarely be entered without 
the peculiar smell which announces the existence of grease almost over- 
powering the stranger. The fact is unpleasant to human sense, but it is 
only right that the probable effect upon the creature, which is doomed 
for the duration of its weary life to inhale such an atmosphere, should 
be considered. 
Smell is perhaps the most acute sense with which the equine race are 
endowed; the horse can appreciate that in which the human being vainly 
endeavors to detect even the slightest odor. Not only is the scent far 
more acute than that of man, but the two beings have to be compared 
as regards their habits; the animal is most cleanly in its tastes. Flesh 
it abhors, and all fatty substance it shrinks from; men eat such things 
with appetite. Then, the human subject can dwell, and even labor, in a 
tainted atmosphere with comparative impunity. A quadruped may be 
forced to toil in such a place; but those who cblige the creature to do 
this kind of work know the certain consequences of the act. They buy 
cheap and old horses—animals which have suffered much, and have but 
a year or two longer to exist. Were younger or dearer quadrupeds 
purchased, in which an energetic constitution would render disease more 
malignant, and were such animals obliged to breathe such contamination, 
the loss in every way would be fearful. 
There is, at present, a great fuss made about sanitary laws; but the 
attention of those to whom such subjects are confided seems to be en- 
grossed by man and his excretions. No one yet appears to have imagined 
that the subject involves life in all its varieties; the horse cannot exist 
in the air which human lungs have exhausted; man cannot live in the 
atmosphere in which the horse has perished. The two creatures are 
not, therefore, entirely distinct; but the open nostrils and huge lungs 
of one horse can consume the oxygen which would support many men. 
Then, the dung of the horse, which is always exposed, gives off fumes 
only slightly less dangerous than those which emanate from the human 
body. Yet officers pry into alleys and into courts; they enter the hab- 
itations of the poor, and count the number of those who sleep in each 
