"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.
[Footnote 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.]
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.
But while the career of the body is thus rendered safe and delightful, the interior mechanism of the foot is protected by one of those simple, beautiful, mechanical arrangements which in every direction demonstrate to us the superintending providence of an Almighty Power.
If the sole, front, sides, and back of a hunter's foot had been created as solid and as inelastic as the gold or silver case of what is called a hunting watch, the interior of the former, like that of the latter, would receive material damage from a heavy blow against the ground.