There are only two. The horse loses his hunting condition, and he acquires so much flesh that his legs and feet are apt to be injured in taking the superfluous flesh off him. It is true that a pasture may be so bare or so crowded that an accumulation of flesh or fat can not take place. The horse may even be starved to emaciation. Still he would lose his hunting condition, even though he obtained neither more nor less flesh than he might carry at work. Unless the horse have more exercise, a faster kind of exercise than he takes at grass, he can not keep his hunt ing condition. He becomes weak and short-winded, whether he have much or little food.

There are no other real objections, unless it be one that the horse is liable to receive the bot-worm into his stomach; but this has never been urged against grazing.

One party has magnified, or rather multiplied, the virtues, and another the evil of a summer's run. Pastured hunters, it is said, are liable to kicks, sprains, and other injuries, in playing or quarrelling with their neighbors; that the feet are often injured by stamping the ground when it is hard, and the flies irritating; that splints and ringbones are sometimes produced in the same way; that the act of grazing is pernicious to the back-tendons; that broken-wind, roaring, and excessive emaciation, have been the results of a summer's run. But these are not the necessary consequences of turning out; they are merely accidents arising from mismanagement or want of care. Some of the alleged evils have no existence. Ringbone, if ever produced at grass, is the result of inattention to the feet, and splints do no more harm by appearing while the horse is at pasture than if he were stabled. They would come whether or not. It has never been proved that grazing injures the back-tendons.

The pages of the sporting periodicals abound with what are called arguments, or what is meant for argument, for and against grazing hunters. With the exceptions to which I have briefly alluded, nothing has come under my notice worthy of particular attention. Enough has been written, if it be measured by quantity; but writers on stable affairs are, in general, not very good writers. They tell stories which neither interest nor instruct, neither refute nor confirm. In truth, they are often entirely destitute of any connexion with the subject of discussion. There are numerous accounts of horses going to grass without fault, and returning with disease, or acquiring disease soon afterward. The circumstance is supposed to be conclusive in favor of the in-door system. On the other side, similar tales are told of horses not doing well in the house. They reason like children. If they see two things at the same time, they immediately believe that one is the cause of the other. If a horse die, or fall lame, while getting grass, that, and nothing else, was the cause.

If a hunter die that had got no grass, no physic, nor any alterative medicine, the want of one or other is the reason he dies.

If a horse could be kept in hunting condition while at grass, o: prepared without hazard, and in time to follow hounds after a summer's run, as well as by keeping him in the stable, there could not, I think, be any reason for keeping him at home. This could be done, but it would require more care, and the cost would be as great as if the horse were kept entirely in the stable.