On this fact being privately whispered by us to the authorities at the Horse Guards, it was at once repudiated by the assertion that it would ruin English cavalry horses were they to be made to sleep without litter on hard boards; and yet all the soldiers of Europe, cavalry as well as infantry, in their guard rooms sleep and snore on wooden beds, probably a good deal sounder than do their respective sovereigns on bedding composed of wool, hair, down, feathers, fine linen, blankets, and counterpanes.
"Canst thou, O partial Sleep! give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;
And, in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king?"—Henry IV.
Another disadvantage of straw-litter is that horses with a voracious appetite are sometimes prone to eat it, whether it be clean or dirty. To prevent them from thus distending as well as injuring their stomachs, it is usual to inflict upon them a muzzle, which, by impeding respiration, is more or less injurious to the lungs.
A better and indeed an effectual mode of prevention is to substitute for straw, wooden shavings, which form a cheap, wholesome, clean, and comfortable bed.
[F] Youatt, in his valuable work entitled "The Horse," truly says that changes from cold to heated foul air are as dangerous to the animal as from heat to cold.
On Shoeing.
As a railway carriage is constructed on springs to soften all ordinary jolts, and with buffers to alleviate any violent concussion;—as the human mind is gifted with a buoyancy which enables it cheerfully to meet any trifling vexation, and with sentiments of religion which maintain its serenity under the severest afflictions, so do the pastern above a horse's foot and the frog beneath it protect the body of the animal from the continual slight concussions and occasional severe ones to which, in ordinary and extraordinary exertions, it is liable to be subjected.
The pastern, like the instep of those Spanish women whose heels in walking scarcely touch the ground, gives grace and elasticity to every step; indeed, in the walk, trot, canter, and gallop of a horse we clearly see the spring of his pasterns softening the movements of their own creation.