A single day of severe exertion may destroy the horse's working condition. His lungs may be injured, a disease may succeed, and require many days to cure it. Between the disease, the cure, and the idleness, the condition may be wholly gone before anything can be done to keep or to restore it. This is termed over-marking, and it is not the excess I here mean.

That to which I allude is not the excess of one day. The horse may perform the work for several days, or even weeks, quite well, yet it may be too much to be done long. One of two things will happen, or both may occur together. The horse will lose flesh, and become weak, or his legs will fail, and he will become lame.

Emaciation, the loss of flesh from excess of work, is easily explained. The work is such as to consume more nutriment than the digestive apparatus can supply. The horse may have as much of the best food as he will eat, yet the power of the stomach and bowels is limited. They can furnish only a certain quantity of nutriment. When the work demands more, it is procured from other parts of the body. The fat, if there be any, is consumed first; it is converted into blood; a little is taken away every day; by-and-by it is all removed, and the horse is lean. Should the demand still continue, other parts are absorbed; the cellular tissue, and ultimately every particle of matter, which the system can spare, is converted into nutriment. When the whole is consumed, the supply must be wholly furnished by the digestive apparatus, and if that were unable to meet the demand at first, it is still less able now. By this time the horse is very lean, his bones stare through the skin; he is spiritless, stiff, and slow, and his belly is tucked up almost to the backbone. The horse becomes unfit for work.

Rest and good food soon restore him, but if work be still exacted, the solids and fluids change, the system falls into decay, and a disease, such as a common cold, or the influenza, from which a horse in ordinary condition would soon recover, produces in this worn-out animal glanders or farcy. Work is sometimes exacted till the horse is ruined, but the owner rarely escapes, for when glanders once appears it seldom stays where it begins.

General Stiffness usually accompanies emaciation. When first taken from the stable, the horse seems to be stiff all over; he obtains greater freedom of motion after he is tolerably well warmed by exertion; but he never has great speed. All old coaching horses are in this state, and all those, whether young or old, who have a deal of hard work, soon become more or less stiff. In racers and hunters, the extent of stride is perceptibly contracted toward the close of their working season. They are termed stale, and require some repose, and green food or carrots, and sometimes a little physic, to refresh them.

The Legs are often so ill formed, that they fail without any excess of work. But fast paces, long journeys, and heavy weights, ruin the very best. A single journey may produce lameness; it may give the horse spavin or grogginess : or some other lameness may be the result of one day's work. But this is more than excess. The horse may have to perform it twice or thrice in his lifetime, but if it be such as to make him lame, it is too much to form regular work. The excess to which I allude does not produce lameness till after the horse has done the journey several times in succession. When two or three become lame, it is high time to make arrangements for preventing more. The distance may be shortened, the draught or weight lightened, or the place retarded.

The legs often show that the work is in excess, though the horse may not be lame. The fore-legs suffer most, but the hind are not exempt. Where there is much up-hill work, or much galloping, the hind fail as often as the fore. The pasterns become straight; and, in extreme cases, the fetlock-joint is bent forward; this is termed knuckling over. At a later period the knees bend forward. The whole leg is crooked, deformed, tottering. Besides these the legs become tumid, round, puffy. There is a general tumefaction, and the egs are said to be gourdy, fleshy, or stale. The deformity produces unsteadiness of action; the limbs tremble after the least exertion, and the horse is easily thrown to the ground. The tumefaction produces a tendency to cracked heels and to grease.

Very often the back tendons suffer enlargement, which, in some cases, depends entirely upon accumulation of the fluid by which they are lubricated, not upon any enlargement of the tendons themselves. The hock and fetlock joints are always large and puffy. These enlargements are termed wind galls, bog-spavin, and thorough-pin. They are little bags containing joint-oil which prevents friction. Rapid and ast-ing exertion increases the quantity of this fluid, and dilates the bags which contain it.

The legs of racers and hunters are always more or less the worse of wear toward the close of their working season. If these horses were wanted all the year through, the legs would demand rest, though the body might not. Hunters rest all summer, racers all winter, and during repose, their legs regain their original integrity and form.

The legs of horses are very differently constructed. Some are so well formed that they suffer a great deal before they begin to fail; others are so defective that they will not stand hard work. With racers and hunters much may be done to save them; fermentations, hand-rubbing, and bandages, are of much service after severe work; but they require too much time and attendance to be employed for inferior horses. In mail and soaching studs, horses with bad legs may be put to short stages; and in many cases it may be proper to let them go to spring grass for four or six weeks; there the legs may be restored so far as to preserve the horse for a year longer.

It is the fashion at present to dispense with breech-bands or breeching for stage-coach horses; and where the road is pretty level, or the coach light, they are of little use. But it seems to me they have been too generally discarded. Without breech-bands the whole weight of the coach in going down hill is thrown upon the neck, and from the neck to the fore legs. Hilly ground is destructive to both fore and hind legs; but the fore ones always fail first. I think breech-bands on the horses that have the worst stage, would make the fore legs last longer.

The Feet are often injured by excess of work. The fore feet are liable to one disease which has been denominated, with as much truth as energy, "the curse of good horses," I mean the navicular disease, or grogginess. It is very common among all kinds of fast-workers. Bad shoeing, neglect of stable cares to preserve the feet, hard roads, and various other agents, have been blamed for producing it. But it seems to me the most common and the most certain cause has been too little considered. Long journeys, at a fast pace, will make almost any horse groggy. Bad shoeing and want of stable care both help, but, I am nearly sure, they alone never produce grogginess. The horse must go far and fast; if his feet be neglected, or shoeing bad, a slower pace and a shorter distance will do the mischief; but I believe there is nothing in the world will make a horse groggy, except driving him far enough and fast enough to alter the synovial secretion of the navicular joint. Cart-horses are quite exempt; horses working in the omnibuses about Glasgow, always on the stones, and often at ten miles an hour, but never more than a mile without stopping, are nearly exempt.

The horses most liable are those which work long and fast stages.

I can not pursue the subject in this treatise. I mention it as one of the evils of excessive work. When many horses become groggy, the stages should be shortened, divided into two, even though no more than one hour can be allowed for rest between them. Founder is sometimes, though very rarely, the result of excessive work; but in most, if not in every case, there is also some error in feeding or watering in operation at same time.

Though I have spoken individually of the evils arising from excess of work, it must not be supposed that they always exist separately. One horse may merely lose flesh; another may become stiff; a third stale on his legs; and a fourth may suffer only in his feet. But it most frequently happens that the horse is affected in more ways than one. In general, emaciation, stiffness, and staleness of the legs, go together.

For some kinds of work the horse can be kept in condition all his life. But the fastest kinds can be performed only for a small portion of a lifetime. Coaching-horses are worn out in from three to four years. I have known some last upward of ten, but these were exceptions. Hunters and racers would be done much sooner, were their work as uninterrupted. The legs decay, however good the body may remain, and long before old age arrives. If it be desirable, as in the case of hunters it is, to preserve the horse till age impairs his powers, he must be put out of work always before his legs are irreparably injured, and kept idle, or at some easier work, till they regain primitive soundness.

Before the close of their working season, hunters and racers are often sensibly impaired. Some are stiff, some lean, some gourdy-legged. Should any of these signs appear long before the end of the season, it may be necessary to rest the horse for a while in order to refresh him. Carrots or green food may be given with the grain. Physics or alteratives may be useful, and directions are given concerning them in another section. Exercise should not be neglected, nor given in ex cess. From three to six weeks may be required to refresh the horse, but the time varies so much, according to the horse's condition, that it is not possible to state any precise period.

Excess Of Food

Horses that are doing full work, as much as they are able to do, can hardly have an excess of food. Some kinds of work, such as that given to mail and stage horses, require an unlimited allowance. If the horse have good legs, or legs equal to the pace, distance, and weight, he can not perform all the work of which he is capable, without as much grain as he will eat. But there are some kinds of work, such as racing and hunting, and especially steeple-chasing, which are so injurious to the legs, that long intervals of repose are necessary; sometimes eight to ten days must elapse before the horse can repeat his task. In this time a, great eater will become fat and short-winded upon a full allowance of food, or his skin will itch and rise in pimples. In such a case, bran-mashes, or a few carrots, should be given now and then instead of grain. Alteratives, diuretics, and such like evacuants may be given; but, I think, more economy in the distribution of food would render them less necessary.

Deficiency of Food impairs condition much sooner and more certainly than excess. It produces emaciation and stiffness, dulness and weakness, in less time than excess of work. The food is deficient when the horse loses flesh, and gets less grain than he would eat-. The work is in excess when he loses flesh, and has all the grain he will consume.

Treatment After Work

This section treats of the cares and appliances usually or sometimes bestowed upon a horse after severe work. Some of them refer to ordinary work. All horses require water, food, cleaning, and bedding, at the end of their exertions; but some, in addition, have need of cordials, fomentations, bandages, and nursing.