For a long time it has been almost universally supposed that the greatest and most lasting vigor could not be obtained without an ample allowance of hard, substantial food, such as raw oats and beans with hay. But within a few years there have been several attempts to show that these articles are improved by cooking. It has been argued that steaming or boiling partially digests the food, or renders it more easy of digestion.

It is nonsense to say that cooking is digestion. The stomach is not a boiler. It does its work in a way of its own, not to be imitated by any culinary process.

Food which has been softened by steaming, maceration, or boiling, may possibly be more quickly digested. The nutri tive matter may be more rapidly and more easily extracted from food after this preparation. Granting that it is so, there is still room, I think, for doubting whether it is advantageous to have all the food rapidly digested. Stablemen, who ought to know best, admit the propriety of giving one feed of boiled food every day during cold weather. But they declare that more sickens the horse, and makes him soft; he perspires profusely, and his energy is soon exhausted. This refers only to horses of fast work, in constant employment.

The opinions of stablemen on this subject have been much ridiculed. They are too apt to theorize. Instead of telling what they see, they tell what they think. They contend that hard food produces hard flesh, and everybody knows that no horse is at his best when his flesh is soft. This is a fine opening for a mere theorist, who knows anything about anatomy. Instead of seeking the foundation of the theory, he attacks the theory itself. "This notion about hard food,' he says, " is all nonsense. All the food, whether hard or soft, must become a fluid before it can form any part of the system. Therefore, the softer it is when given, the sooner is it dissolved."

It is quite true, and easily proved, that no food can afford nourishment till it assumes a fluid form. But this is not the way to settle the question. Some men are such inveterate theorists that they always argue when they ought only to experiment.

Place two or more horses, similar in size, age, condition, power, and breeding, at the same work and in the same stable. To one give the food all soft, to another all hard, and to a third give it partly hard and partly soft. Continue the experiment for a month, and then reverse it, by giving to one the food which was given to another. Observe the condition of the horses from beginning to end, and be careful that the result is not influenced by some circumstances not operating equally upon all. One might catch cold, fall lame or sick, and he would not be a fair subject for comparison. This is the proper way to decide the matter. If conjecture should set le it, conjecture is easily made. Thus, soft food contains a deal of water; probably this water enters the system along with the nutritive matter, and though it may fill up the tissues, and produce plumpness, yet it confers no vigor. The nutritive matter which has been obtained from this soft, watery food, has entered the system too rapidly - before it has been sufficiently animalized to form any durable part of the system. I is, therefore, soon and easily evacuated. Ima gine this to be true - it is very like the stuff found in the treatises on dietetics - and there is no difficulty in seeing the superiority of hard food.

Without any theory, however, upon the subject, appearances seem in favor of the common opinion.

The continuous use of Hard Food is supposed to produce progressive increase of vigor for several months, or, according to some, for several years. Among stablemen it is a com mon way of recommending a horse, to say that he has got year's hard keep in him. Nimrod has gone much further Speaking of post-horses, the work they do, sometimes sixty miles in a day, and the abuse they suffer from exposure to the weather, from bad stables, and bad grooms, he alludes to their condition, and asks how it is that, in defiance of such hard usage, they look so well and do so much. "Is it," he says, "their natural physical strength? Is it the goodness of their nature ? My reasoning faculty tells me it is neither - they would both fail. No! it is solely to be attributed to the six, eight, ten, twelve, perhaps fourteen years' hard meat which they have got in them - to that consolidation of flesh, that invigorating of muscle, that stimulus to their nature, which this high keep has imparted to them - which give them, as it were, a preternatural power."

Had Nimrod always written thus, he should never have been quoted by me. There is not, in all his letters, another passage so remarkable for bad reasoning and bad writing. No one ever knew a post-horse twelve or fourteen years on the road without interruption. If he had occasionally to perform a journey of sixty miles in one day, he would often, in the course of so many years, require to be thrown off work for several successive weeks, either for lameness or for sickness; and every time such a horse is idle for a number of weeks, he loses all the vigor which previous work and solid food had conferred.

When horses are well fed, they are generally well worked. In the course of time they acquire strength and endurance, which the undomesticated horse can never rival. Solid food has perhaps a good deal to do in the production of such vigor, but the work has much more. Without work, no kind nor quantity of food will make a hunter or a racer. To encounter extraordinary labor, the horse must be trained to it; and, while training, he must be fed on solid food, or at least upon rich food.

It appears that solid is better than soft food for such work, but how long the horse must be accustomed to this hard food before he becomes as vigorous as it can make him, is still an undecided question. The improvement is progressive, but it must have some limits. So far as I have been able to observe, it appears that in one year judicious feeding and work will in all cases render a mature horse as fit for his work as he will ever be. Many can be seasoned in less than three months, and a great number receive all the improvement of which they are susceptible in less than six; I do not believe that any mature horse improves after he has been on solid food and in work for one year, and this period includes the time allotted to training.

A Mixed Diet is, in some cases, better than that composed of only two or three articles. Oats and hay form the ordinary food of stabled horses. In summer, a little grass is frequently added, and in winter, roots. But a great number of horses kept in towns receive nothing but oats and hay all the year round. For those that do only moderate work, these two articles, with a weekly feed of bran, seem to be sufficient. But others, whose work is more laborious, and often performed in stormy weather, are, I think, the better of a more complicated diet, more especially when the ordinary food is not of the best quality. Beans form a third article, and to hardworking horses they are almost indispensable. During the trying months of winter, the diet may be still further varied by barley, or wheat, or rye. These may be boiled, and given only once a day, or they may enter into every feed. The change should be made slowly; the new articles, at first, not exceeding a fourth or fifth part of the whole, and an equal quantity of the ordinary food being withheld.

As the horse becomes used to them, the quantity may increase, if a larger quantity be deemed useful.

The horses to whom a mixed diet is most necessary, are those that perform the severest work. The principal advantage derived from the combination of several articles, is that of tempting the horses to feed more heartily. They eat more of this mixed food than of the simple, because one or more of the articles are new to them. The horses, therefore, main tain their condition better. It may also be. that the use of several articles enables the system to obtain that from one which can not be furnished by another.