October, 1913 



THE GARDEN AND FIELD. 



229 



^Bained, and in some cases tutally 

 ^Bttsidc the possiiI)ility vi iniprove- 

 Hpent. Tlve ponies have theii" own 

 ^^rticnlar methods of ci-ossin<; 

 those boirs. They never go on 

 what k)oks dry and safe ground, 

 but always on a wet, sloppy path 

 of their own, and henee they never 

 g«t into a bog, whieh other, less- 

 accustonied travellers invariably 

 do. But the ponies have uplands 

 as well to go upon, and they varv 

 thei'r whereabouts according to the 

 weather. Thev have valleys to 

 explore and feed in,; bums or small 

 brooks to cross, different soils, 

 from turf to sand, to wander 

 upon, and a bracing climate to 

 harden the bone, horn, and tissues. 

 The result of it all is that thev 

 are the best-footed horses in the 

 kingdom. No one has ever heard 

 of a A\'elsh of Dartmoor pony 

 going wrong in his feet, excepting 

 through the culpable stupiditv of 

 an owner. They are always very 

 hard and wide for the size of the 

 animal, and as a proof of dura- 

 bility there are hundreds of native- 

 bred ponies that have lived up to 

 thirty years in hard work and have 

 never been lame in their lives. The 

 Irish horses give a somewhat 

 Similar experience. They have often 

 been bred where laud has hadi very 

 little draining, with fences in a 

 verv locse condition to make one 

 field accessible to the next ; and 

 so the animal may be in uplands 

 in one part of a day. and on a 

 marsh or meadow in the other, 

 with generally a brook running 

 through to cross over, and, being 

 left out at night as well as day, 

 there are the dews and frosts to 

 moisten and perhaps invigorate the 

 hoof. At any rate, Irish hunters 

 invariably impress English black- 

 smiths. Concerning their wonder- 

 fully hard feet, one can remember 

 a steeplechase horse that had won 

 on twenty-three occasions and been 

 in training seven seasons that 

 quite astonished his shoers by his 

 extraordinarily hard, tough hoofs 

 that really wanted some handi- 

 work to pare. He came from Ire- 

 land, and was not trained until 

 late as a two-year-old. Another 

 two-year-old that stood training 

 very w^ell until he was six was 

 English-bred, and for the first 

 twelve months of his life was an 

 occupant of fashionable paddocks, 

 kept in, excepting in fme weather, 

 got up for sale, and plates ppit 

 upon his half-grown fore feet, with 

 the result that they were like 

 cockle-shells, little round feet, up- 

 right, and looking to the eye 

 glossy and soft. In other hands 

 the little plates were quickly taken 

 oS and thet young animal allowed 



full freedom in a paddock in which 

 the re was a i)ond with a very 

 ■ muddy bottom. Here he would 

 stand for hours on a hot day, 

 swishing the Hies off him.sclf with 

 his tail, and evidentlv enjoying thci 

 cold m.ud as comfortable to his 

 pooT young feet. In six months 

 they grew wide. Hat, and strong, 

 quite the revcr.s^e to the little 

 cockle-shells, and two years later 

 that horse won the Ceasarewitch. 

 Wol'.dd ho have done so but for the 

 muddy-bottomed pond ? 



— The Lesson. — 



That there should he some water 

 in all paddocks or fields for 

 yoimg animals to cross over or 

 to stand in is reasonable enough, 

 but such a view is seldom taken, 

 as the greatest stud farms are as 

 often enough without such accom- 

 modation. The disadvantages of 

 certain soils might be obviated by 

 such a natural course, as certainly 

 a clay subsoil that is rendered into, 

 almost the condition of bricks by 

 the sun's rays cannot be right, 

 and a chalk soil of, no depth, and 

 so lacking in moisture, must be 

 equally objectionable. Old land is 

 said to be very, good, such as has 

 never been ploughed within the 

 memory of man, and of these 

 Yorkshire can boast in her wide 

 stretches of wold, but perhaps the 

 fine, breezy climate has something 

 to do with it as well, and make 

 the many-acred county the land 

 for horses. Something, though, 

 must be said for Lincolnshire and 

 Cambridgeshire with tbeir fens 

 that, up to fifty or sixty years 

 ago, were in very much the condi- 

 tion of Dartmoor in the matter of 

 drainage. The science of agricul- 

 ture has done much since, but in 

 ^■ears long ago, when these fens 

 were marshes, horses by thousands 

 were bred there, and the very ani- 

 mals of all others that did the 

 road work of the times that 

 wanted exceptionally good feet, 

 the hacks that had to travel sixty 

 miles a day, the horses for the 

 fast coaches, and the hunters that 

 used to last ten or twelve seasons, 

 without the assistance of comrades 

 or second horses. It might not 

 be the wisest policy to change the 

 site of stud farms on soil and cli- 

 mate considerations only, as it ap- 

 pears from the SjUggestions of Na- 

 ture, and much that has been seen 

 in the past, that the ever-import- 

 ant growth of horses' feet is due 

 to an almost daily different exis- 

 tence. A constant dwelling-place 

 on very dry soil is no doubt pre- 

 judicial and answerable, perhaps, 

 for the fact that a good third of 



the racing-stock is useless through 

 a deficiency of foot-.structurc, and 

 diseases of the feet in the heavier 

 breeds may be due to the .same. 

 It may not do, either, for the foot 

 to be resting always on wet, 

 damp grounds, as that might pro- 

 duce a tendency to softness in hoof- 

 texture, but the changes such as 

 horses gi\e themselves in shifting 

 their ground according to weather 

 seems the right course, and per- 

 haps it is our variable soil and cli- 

 mate that has made the British 

 horse what he is. The right policy 

 should be, then, to follow that 

 of Nature as applicable to the 

 country, and that would be to 

 have uplands and lowlands on the 

 same stud estates, with water 

 such as the ponies have on their 

 moorland retreats, and to carefully 

 follow out the rules of Nature in 

 constantly, changing the locations 

 of voung stock in accordance with 

 the weather.— Liyestock Journal. 



♦ 



Barbed Wire. 



Most of us know barbed wire, 

 some of us have sworn at it, some 

 of us have sat on it and sworn 

 some more. The inventor, how- 

 ever, is still Idessing it. It is said 

 to have been the luckiest invention 

 m history. It came abopt by ac- 

 cident. The inventor of barbed 

 wire, having a neighbour whose 

 pigs trespassed oh his garden, he 

 put up one day a wire fence of his 

 own make. This fence had barbs 

 and points on it ; it was queer 

 and ugl}'— but it kept out the pigs. 

 It was a real barbed wire fence— 

 the first in the world— and there 

 was m-illions of m.oney in it ; but 

 the young owner and his friends 

 laughed at its freak appearance. 

 One day two strangers saw this 

 fence, perceived how well it kept 

 out the pigs, realized how cheap 

 it was— ijpealized, in a word, its 

 value — and ordered several tons of 

 it. Furthermore, they contracted 

 to sell for a term of years all the 

 barbed wire he could produce. He 

 borrowed i,ooo dollars, and setup 

 a little factory. A iew years 

 later on he ha.d paid back that "loan, 

 and was worth a small matter of 

 15,000,000 dollars besides. 



SADDLE AND HARNESS MAKER. 



Grindery Stocked. 

 Comer— 159, Hindley and Morphett 

 Streets. 



Special terms to Country Clients. 

 Satisfaction Guaranteed. 



