2rA 
Management of Farm-Horscs. 
applies only fo those farms where there are abundant pastures, 
and consequently where the after-o;rass abounds. 
In farms where pastures are deficient, the horse maybe turned 
into yards, and supplied with green food to equal advantage. 
When the nights get cold, and before the moulting season, the 
horses should no longer be turned out at night, but the change 
may be rendered gradual by letting them out a couple of hours 
in the afternoon after the day's work is over, and also on Sundays 
during the day, if the weather is fine. 
So far, and so far only, I believe, the practice of turning out 
working horses is consistent with reason. 
4. Feeding in different Seasons. 
We now approach the most important part of our subject, 
viz., " feeding in different seasons;" for the expense of keeping 
the horse-power on a farm is very great, and forms a very con- 
siderable proportion of the annual expense of the farm, so much 
so, indeed, that it is worthy of the utmost consideration whether 
some saving cannot be effected in this large item of expenditure. 
It should be borne in mind, however, that there are two methods of 
effecting or endeavouring to effect this saving : one the lessening the 
quantity or quality of the food, the other the retaining the quantity 
of food, but reducing the number of horses. Now I must freely 
confess that I incline towards the latter method of lessening 
these expenses, and I do not sympathize with the advocates of the 
starvation principle. Many writers in magazines and other works 
have laboured very ingeniously to show how very cheaply horses 
can be kept ; one contends that a liberal supply of carrots* is 
alone sufficient without any other food, another that abundance of 
straw and a mere taste of corn is enough; after the precedent, 
no doubt, of those retailers of food who in the dark alleys of the 
metropolis vociferously proclaim their " ha-porth of peas, and a 
suck at the bacon for nothing," or the still more scientific dis- 
coverer who found a mode of keeping his horse upon sawdust, 
though, unfortunately, the animal died just as his plan was reaching 
perfection. 
* Although according in the writer's objection to the " starvation sys- 
tem," and being quite satisfied from long experience that r;ood worh can 
only be obtained by good feeding, yet I cannot avoid mentioning that, when 
residing during the last year at Boulogne, I frequently visited the farm of a 
ISlorfolk gentleman, who there held a couple of hundred acres of turnip- 
land, cultivated as cleanly as if it were in England, and that he fed his cart- 
horses, during the entire winter, solely on carrots, chaff of clover, and 
straw ; without any portion of oats or beans. The cattle were of the ordi- 
nary Norman breed — something like the Suffolk-Punch — ploughing, in 
pairs, full an acre a day from the stubble, and were in excellent working- 
condition. — F. Burke. 
