MR. DICK ON COOKING FOOD FOR HORSES. 681 
that the horses would have been unable to do fast or severe work. 
It would have been expected that they would not have run a 
stage without being fatigued ; they, however, have kept their 
condition, and have been improved by the feeding ; and although 
when Captain Cheyne proposed first to try the experiment, the 
post lads insisted the horses would not be able to do their work 
on such soft feeding, and thought they would purge and become 
washy, they soon found their fears were imaginary ; and expe¬ 
rience has now so fully convinced them of the advantage of such 
feeding, that their only anxiety now is to obtain a greater quan¬ 
tity of the mash at night. There is here, then, a striking fact, 
which goes far to disprove the correctness of the notions which so 
generally prevail regarding hard keep being requisite to good 
condition. 
The various kinds of food upon which the horse is fed, pos¬ 
sesses different proportions of nutritive matter. Of these, it is 
stated in the Treatise upon the Horse, in the Library of Useful 
Knowledge, as extracted from Sir H. Davy's Agricultural Che¬ 
mistry, that wheat possesses the nutritive property in the great¬ 
est abundance, there being, in 1000 parts, 955 of nutritive mat¬ 
ter; in barley, 920; in oats, 743; peas, 574; beans, 570; po¬ 
tatoes, 230, &c. 
Now, one would suppose that the best food, from this view of 
the matter, would be wheat. But it is found that wheat does 
not suit so well as we might expect, from the quantity of nutri¬ 
ment which it contains ; it either purges or deranges the sto¬ 
mach ; and barley is found to have a similar effect. Oats and 
beans are, therefore, resorted to, as they have hitherto been found 
to suit best the digestive organs of the horse. 
The cause of this is commonly supposed to arise from oats, 
beans, and peas possessing a certain degree of astringency, which 
prevents the food from passing through the bowels with the ra¬ 
pidity with which the wheat and barley does. Whether those 
grains have any laxative property, is perhaps a matter not so 
fully determined as some suppose; for, although bran, the 
coating of wheat, has some such effect, still the fact may be, that 
these grains possess too large a proportion of nutritious matter, 
and that they therefore excite the increased action of the bowels. 
The digestive organs of the horse, like the ox, Sic., are very ca¬ 
pacious, and are evidently intended to take in a large proportion 
of matter containing a small proportion of nutriment. And if 
the food, therefore, upon which they are made to live is of too 
rich a quality, there is, by the excitement produced, an increase 
of the peristaltic motion, in order to throw off the superabun¬ 
dant quantity which has been taken into the stomach and bowels. 
