540 Breeding and Management of Horses on a Farm. 
lamentably inattentive. There is scarcely one farm-stable in fifty 
that is properly and thoroughly cleaned out even once every week, 
and the accumulation of dung, urine, and frequently green meat 
of various kinds, in different stages of decomposition, are hourly 
exercising their baneful influence upon the blood of every horse 
that is allowed to breathe an atmosphere thus loaded with noxious 
effluvia. The operation of pure atmospheric air upon the blood 
in its passage through the lungs has already been noticed, as 
likewise the fact that by this operation alone it is rendered 
capable of acquiring those properties by which healthy animal life 
is carried on. The purer the atmosphere in which any animal is 
kept, the more vigorously and the more healthily will every 
function of the different organs of the body be exercised, and con- 
sequently the inhalation of air impregnated with the stench of 
vegetable matter in a state of putrefaction, by corrupting the 
blood with Avhich it comes in contact, vitiates every secretion of 
the body, and in time, if it cause not actual disease, which is most 
probable, never fails, at all events, to produce languor and de- 
bility. Independent too of the injury secondarily caused to every 
part of the frame by the influence of foul air upon the blood, the 
gases arising from dung, urine, &c., act prejudicially upon the 
eyes, a fact of which any person who will remain in a foul stable 
while it is being cleansed may practically assure himself. 
There are but few farmers who will give themselves the trouble 
to exercise a proper degree of supervision over the malpractices 
of carters and ploughmen in the stable, more especially if it 
contain none but agricultural horses, and there are possibly still 
fewer who have any idea that at every inspiration a portion of the 
blood circulating through the body undergoes a change without 
which no animal could exist. Having become aware, however, of 
this fact, it is not only the duty but also the interest of every 
farmer personally to superintend the care of his horses, and to 
insist upon his stable being daily cleaned out ; an operation 
which, it regularly performed, will in the end occasion far less 
trouble than when filth of every kind is allowed to accumulate for 
days, to say nothing of the beneficial effect of cleanliness upon 
the team. The breeder of valuable horses will no doubt be more 
alive to the necessity of attention to his young stock than the man 
who has an occasional colt or filly, the goodness of which ho 
leaves pretty much to chance ; but the jirinciple of obtaining for 
every horse a due supply of fresh air, and of keeping him in an 
atmosphere unimpregnated with noxious vapours of any kind, is 
the same as far as regards the purposes of healtli, whether a horse 
be worth ten pounds or a hundred. 
During the act of respiration one of the component parts of 
atmospheric air becojnes destroyed by coming in contact with the 
