Breeding and Management of Horses on a Farm. 537 
In so unnatural a state as this no man would of course ever 
think of keeping any horse ; but I have given the extreme ex- 
ample of the effects of over-feeding in one particular, in order 
that the farmer may comprehend one of the results of an undue 
allowance of food, and be made to understand how important is 
the one item of diet to the maintenance of the vigour and tone of 
every fibre of the body, and how nervous energy — the mainspring 
of power — may be sapped and destroyed by persistence in a 
wrong system of feeding. 
There is yet another result of repletion which in the long run 
cannot fail to ruin the health of any animal ; and there is no ques- 
tion that every beast that attains any great degree of obesity can 
never be considered in a healthy condition^ and probably is in a 
state bordering upon disease, if the organization of one or more 
parts of the body be not already morbidly affected. The result 
to which I allude is irritation of the stomach and bowels, which, 
operating sympathetically upon the whole system, reduces the 
tone of every organ, vitiates the secretions, and renders the animal 
listless and inactive, a condition which of course it is our interest 
to avoid or remedy by every means in our power when occurring 
in those animals, as the horse and the dog, upon whose exertions 
depend our profit or amusement, and whose flesh is of no value 
as food for man. 
There are two agents that operate simultaneously in the pro- 
duction of irritation of the alimentary canal. The first of these 
is distension, which, often repeated, never fails to superinduce 
debility ; and the second is putrefaction. The stomach secretes 
a fluid called the gastric juice, whose properties are highly anti- 
septic, and which, by being intimately blended with the food, 
renders it capable of resisting the effects of decomposition, or 
putrefaction. So long as an animal experiences the sensation of 
hungei', this fluid is poured out from the coats of the stomach in 
sufficient quantity to saturate the aliment that is swallowed ; but 
that feeling once appeased, the secretion of the gastric juice 
either ceases entirely, or its properties are so altered and weak- 
ened as to be no longer capable of offering due resistance to the 
putrefactive process. Thus, beyond a certain quantity, every 
mouthful of food, placed as it must be in the situation most likely 
to favour decomposition — namely, one of warmth and moisture — 
speedily becomes a putrid mass, evolving a large quantity of 
noisome gas — as does every animal or vegetable substance in this 
state — by which distension is increased and acidity and irritation 
produced. The primary effects of continued repletion are gene- 
rally costiveness, from the retention of a great quantity of fecal 
matter in the large intestines, and occasional diarrhoea, from 
rritation of the mucous membrane which lines the alimentary 
