GRASS
—is that well-known produce of the earth, which is the proper food for horses in a state of NATURE, EASE, and INDOLENCE; but not of sufficient nutritive property for horses engaged in either SEVERE, LABORIOUS, or ACTIVE exertions. Horses taken up from grass, and put suddenly to work, labour under an immediate and perceptible disquietude; the contents of the intestines are soon evacuated in a STATE of LAXITY, the frame displays a profusion of FOUL and FŒTID PERSPIRATION, the body bespeaks its own DEBILITY, and the perseverance of a few days demonstrates its EMACIATION. To horses having been whole months in constant use and work, alternately accustomed to diurnal drudgery, and the routine of the manger, GRASS, with its conjunctive LIBERTY, must prove a sweet, a comfortable, a proper, and a healthy change: it not only, by its own attenuating property, proportionally alters the PROPERTY of the BLOOD, but affords, by the comforts of EASE and EXPANSION, a renovation of elasticity and vigour to the relaxed sinews, the exhausted spirits, and the battered frame.
To the penurious and the unfeeling (equally insensible) it is sufficient, that a horse, worn to the bone with constant work, and want of food, is "TURNED TO GRASS" in the winter, when there is none to be eaten; or during the months of July and August, when a horse loses more FLESH by persecution from flies (if not well protected by shade, accommodated with plenty of water, and an equal plenty of grass) than he can acquire by any advantage arising from LIBERTY alone; which some people seem to conceive all that is required, and that the poor animal, Camelion like, "can live upon the air." It should be recollected, that in the animal œconomy, substance only can beget substance, (see Aliment;) and no horse will be likely to accumulate flesh, or become FAT, whose means of living are poor.
Impoverished rushy moors, and lank half-rotten autumn grass, (particularly after wet summers,) will prove much more likely to produce DISEASE, than produce CONDITION. Those who turn out horses to grass with a cough upon them, particularly if from a WARM STABLE in a cold season, may expect to take them up with a short, husky, laboured asthmatic increase of the original complaint, or with tubercles formed upon the lungs; and those who turn out in the winter season, with a hope of obtaining the cure of CRACKED HEELS, or SWELLED LEGS, may probably take up with a confirmed GREASE, particularly if the constitution should lean a little to blood, and pedigree of that description.
The utility and advantages of physic were never better understood, or more clearly ascertained, than at the present moment of general improvement: experienced sportsmen, and rational observers, however doubtful they may have been, are now convinced of its propriety, and never deviate from its practice. They invariably cleanse at the end of the HUNTING SEASON, and repeat the ceremony after taking their horses up from grass, previous to getting them into condition. Let those who doubt the consistency, try the experiment, and they will be soon convinced, how little one will be enabled to stand a WINTER'S WORK with the other.
GRAVELLED
.—A horse is said, by the lower classes, to be GRAVELLED, when broken particles of flints, or small pebbles, are insinuated between the outer SOLE of the FOOT and the WEB of the SHOE. This injury is seldom sustained, but where the shoe is formed too flat upon the inner surface, (without its proper protecting concavity,) when pressing too close, whatever extraneous substance gains admission, is there confined, and, from the stricture, has no possible chance of extrication. The degree of pain, or tenderness, depends entirely upon the mildness or severity of the case, and the length of its duration. The road to relief is the same; the shoe should be tenderly taken off, by one nail at a time, in preference to tearing it off by main and sudden force, (according to custom;) the sole should be well fomented with good hot milk and water, then covered with an EMOLLIENT POULTICE of linseed powder, milk, and two table spoonsful of olive oil, letting the same be repeated daily, till the inflammation has subsided, and the tenderness gone off; when the bottom of the hoof may be hardened by two or three applications of a sponge dipt in vinegar boiling hot before THE SHOE is replaced.
GREASE
.—The GREASE is a disorder particularly affecting the CART or DRAFT HORSES of this country, but is seldom or rarely observed amongst horses of a superior description: its seat is cutaneous, and it first discovers itself by a stagnation of the fluids, and as consequent inflammatory enlargement above and about the fetlock, attended with pain and stiffness, more or less, according to the state of the subject, or the severity of the attack. If proper means are not immediately taken, and judiciously persevered in, a degree of virulence, much trouble, and tedious attendance, unavoidably ensue. The skin, by its preternatural distension, soon assumes a greasy kind of transparency, having an irregular scaly appearance upon the surface, from whence (particularly when put into action) exudes a thin oily ICHOR, which, when become of long duration, is frequently tinged WITH BLOOD, but always of a filthy unctuous property, and greasy to the touch.
As it advances in unrestrained progress, it increases the growth of the hoof around THE CORONET, rendering it of a soft, spongy, and diseased appearance: by the corrosive and fœtid property of the discharge, it soon affects and putrifies THE FROG, which it centrically corrodes, and lays the foundation of CANKER in the FOOT. As it becomes more inveterate, so it proportionally extends itself, and affects the surrounding parts; the small apertures from whence the ferous ichor originally oozed, now become malignant ULCERS, intersected by warty excrescences, and watery bladders of a poisonous appearance. Arrived by length of time, want of care, and probably by the use of improper medicines, or injudicious treatment, at this its second stage, it assumes a more formidable appearance, and every symptom, as well as the limb, continues to increase: what were before only CADAVEROUS ULCERS, now become (in a partial degree) barky eschars, intermixed with growing tetters, from amidst which trickles down, in smoaking heat, the acrimonious sanies, or corrupted matter, which seems to excoriate as it passes, and soon deprives the part of hair; the little that is left serving only as so many conductors, from whence flows in streams the morbid matter, now become so truly offensive, that a horse, in such state, should be separated from others, lest fumes so incredibly noxious should, from the miasma, lay the foundation of disease with horses perfectly sound.