In Scotland the floor of the stable is almost universally laid either with whinstone or freestone, or partly with the one and partly with the other. Very often, the gangway and about one half of the stall are paved, while the other half of the stall is causewayed. In a few cases hard bricks are employed, and arranged on edge; the first expense is less, but bricks, even when well selected and properly laid, are not sufficiently durable, especially under heavy horses. So long as they remain in order, however, they make a very good floor, which always affords firm foot-hold, but I do not recommend it.

Pavement is apt to get slippery and make the horses fall when rising, or when leaving the stable. I once saw a horse break his thighbone in rising from a paved stall, but there was no fixed partition between the stalls, and very little litter on the ground, otherwise it is probable the accident would not have happened. In the same stable several other horses have been lamed in the same way and from the same causes.

A Paved Floor, however, when properly grooved, is the best both for gangway and stalls; it is durable and easily kept clean. To prevent the horse from slipping, it ought to be furrowed by concave grooves about three inches wide and one deep. At the gangway these should run across the stable, and in the stall they should run parallel with the partitions. Both should slope to the gutter. In some stables these grooves have others running directly or obliquely across them. They are rarely three inches wide in any stable; most frequently they do not exceed one inch. When narrow they require to be numerous. They need not be so wide at bottom as at top When too narrow they are always full of dirt. The grooves may be four inches apart.

A Causewayed Floor is the next best: and, when properly laid, it is more durable than a freestone floor. Instead of the usual blocks of stone, of all shapes and all sizes, some rising and some sinking from the general level, the stones ought to be square, and neatly joined, having no large intervals filled with sand, which alternately receives and rejects the urine, keeping the air constantly saturated with its unwholesome vapors. Causeway, however, is never so cleanly as freestone flags, and it is difficult to get it sufficiently grooved. When laid in the ordinary, anyhow way, a causewayed floor is dirty, uneven, slippery, and easily torn up by the horses' feet, or undermined by rats. Pebbles or Dutch clinkers are often 'employed as stable flooring; but I can say nothing about them, for in this country their place is supplied by whin-stone.

In former times the stalls were laid with planks of oak, in which holes were bored that led the urine into underground drains. This mode of flooring has gone entirely out of use, and there appears no reason for reviving it. The ancient writers complain that it produced many accidents from the horse slipping, and from the planks starting out of place.

[The climate in Great Britain is so much damper than that of America, that the objections there to a plank floor will not hold good here. Lumber is also very much dearer there than here, which is another serious objection with the English to wooden floors.