That which forms the general covering is intended to keep the horse warm. It conducts heat very slowly, and is therefore well adapted for retaining it. It absorbs no moisture, and when the horse is in good health, every hair is anointed with an oily sort of fluid which imparts a beautiful gloss, and repels moisture.

The hair is shed every spring and every autumn. The short fine coat which suffices for the summer, affords little protection against the severity of winter; it falls and is replaced by another of the same material, though longer and coarser. It is not very obvious why the horse should moult twice every year. We might suppose that a mere increase in the length of the summer coat would render it sufficiently warm for the winter. Without doubt there is some reason why it is otherwise ordered. The hair* perhaps is not of the same texture; that of the winter coat certainly appears to be coarser; it is thicker, and it requires more care to keep it glossy than the hair of a summer coat.

The hair is not cast all at once. Before losing its connexion with the skin it assumes a lighter color, and becomes dim and deadlike. On some warm day a large quantity comes away which is not missed, though its fall is very evident. The process seems to stop for several days and to recommence. Though a little is always falling, yet there are times at which large quantities come out, and it is said that the whole is shed at thrice. Moulting, and the length and thickness of the coat, are much influenced by stable treatment and the weather. Horses that are much and for a long time out of doors, exposed to cold, always have the hair much longer than those kept in warm stables, or those that are more in the stable than in the open air. If the horse be kept warm and well fed, his winter coat will be very little longer than that of summer, and it will lie nearly as well. Moulting may even be entirely prevented; heavy clothing and warm stabling will keep the summer coat on all winter. The horse, however, must not be often nor long exposed to cold, for though he may be made to retain his summer coat till after the usual period of changing it, yet it will fall even in the middle of winter, if he be much exposed to winter weather.

Grooms often hasten the fall of the winter coat by extra dressing and clothing, in order that the horse may have his fine summer coat a little earlier than usual. This, especially when the spring is cold and the horse much, exposed, is not right, for it generally makes the summer coat longer than if it had not appeared till the weather was warmer.

The long hair which grows on the legs of some horses is doubtless intended to answer the same purpose as the short hair of the body. It is longer and stronger, because the parts are more exposed to cold and to wet. It is always longest in horses that are reared in damp or marshy situations, where the grass is luxuriant, and the soil charged with moisture. Such pastures are necessary for the large draught-horse, who consumes much food, more than the light racing-horse, to whom the scanty herbage of a dryer situation is sufficient. But, independent of this, length of hair upon the legs is peculiar to particular breeds. It is always long in draught-horses and Highland ponies, and short in blood-horses wherever they are reared. On the legs of thorough-bred horses, the hair is not much longer than that on the body, with the exception of a tuft at the back of the fetlock-joint. This is termed the foot-lock. It defends the parts beneath from external injury, to which they are liable by contact with the ground.

When very long, good grooming, good food, and warm stabling, always shorten the hair of the legs.

The hair of the mane has been regarded as ornamental, and it is so; but to say that any part of an animal was conferred for the sole purpose of pleasing the eye of man, is almost as much as to say that all were not created by the same Being. Had the mane been superfluous to the horse, we could have been made to admire him without it. God has made it pleasing to us, because it is useful to him. In a wild state the horse has many battles to fight, and his neck, deprived of the mane, wonld be a very vulnerable part. It is likewise a pari that he can not reach with his teeth, and not easily with his feet. The flies might settle there and satiate themselves without disturbance: if the mane can not altogether exclude those intruders, it can lash them off by a single jerk of the head. I believe that in wild horses the mane falls equally on both sides of the neck.

The long hair of the mane, the tail, and the legs, is not shed in the same manner as that on the body. It is deciduous, but it does not fall so regularly, so rapidly, nor so often as the other. Each hair, from its length, requires a much longer time to grow; if all were shed at once, the parts would be left defenceless for perhaps more than a month. Some of the hairs are constantly losing their attachment and falling out, while others are as constantly growing. It is not possible to say what determines the fall of these hairs in horses not domesticated. It may be some circumstance connected with their age or length more than with the change of season. When brushed and combed many of them are pulled out.