In this country horses are fed upon oats, hay, grass, and roots. Many people talk as if they could be fed on nothing else. But in other parts of the world, where the productions of the soil are different, the food of the horse is different. "In some sterile countries, they are forced to subsist on dried fish, and even on vegetable mould; in Arabia, on milk, flesh-balls, eggs, broth, etc. In India, horses are variously fed. The native grasses are judged very nutritious. Few, perhaps no oats are grown; barley is rare, and not commonly given to horses. In Bengal, a vetch, something like the tare is used. On the western side of India, a sort of pigeon-pea, called gram (cicer arietinum), forms the ordinary food, with grass while in season, and hay all the year round. Indian-corn or rice is seldom given. In the West Indies, maize, Guinea-corn, sugar-cane tops, and sometimes molasses, are given. In the Mahratta country, salt, pepper, and other spices, are made into balls, with flour and butter, and these are supposed to produce animation, and to fine the coat. Broth made from sheep's-head, is sometimes given.

In France, Spain, and Italy, besides the grasses, the leaves of limes, vines, the tops of acacia, and the seeds of the carab-tree, are given to horses."*

[In the United States many different kinds of natural and cultivated grasses, green or dried as hay, are used in feeding horses; also Indian, Egyptian, and broom corn, their blades and stalk; sugar and wild cane tops, and molasses drippings; rice, wheat, and other straw of different kinds, and their grain and bran; beans, pease, and their pods and vines; artichoke and potato tops and their roots, together with many other vegetables; pumpkins, squash, and other vine fruit; flax and flaxseed; sunflower seed; acorns and other nuts; the twigs, buds, and leaves of trees; apples and other fruit; cabbage.]

* Loudon's Enc. of Agric, p. 1004.

The articles upon which horses are fed in this country are usually arranged into three classes. That which possesses the least nutriment in proportion to its bulk, is termed fodder, and consists of grass, hay, and straw; that which possesses the most nutriment, in proportion to its bulk, is termed corn. This word is often used as if it belonged exclusively to oats; but it is a general name for all the kinds of grain and pulse upon which horses are fed. In this work it is used only in its general sense. Roots, such as carrots, turnips, and potatoes, form the third kind of food. In relation to their bulk, they have less nutriment than grain, and more than fodder. I do not think this classification is of any use, and here it will not be regarded, but it is well to know the meaning usually attached to the terms.

Green Herbage

There are several kinds of green food, but the individual properties of each are so little known, that much can not be said about them.

Beans, Wheat, Rye, And Oats

Beans, Wheat, Rye, And Oats, the whole plant, are sometimes, but very seldom, and never regularly used as food for horses. Cabbage, and some other green articles, are eaten, but they deserve no particular notice. Several, which form the ordinary green food of horses in other countries, are not grown here. The leaves and clippings of the vine are much used in many parts of France.