The hair of the fetlock, the hollow of the pastern, and the posterior aspect of the legs, is longer on heavy draught-horses than on those of finer bone. It is intended to keep the legs warm, and perhaps in some degree to defend them from external violence. It becomes much shorter and less abundant after the horse is stabled, kept warm, well fed, and well groomed. The simple act of washing the legs, or rubbing them, tends to make the hair short and thin, and to keep it so. Nevertheless, it is a very common practice, especially in coaching-stables, to clip this hair away almost close to the root. Cart-horses very rarely have the heels trimmed; well-bred horses seldom require it. The hand-rubbing which the legs and heels of these horses receive, keeps the hair short, and it is never very long even without hand-rubbing.

The heels are trimmed in three different ways: the most common and the easiest is to clip away all the long hair, near or close to the roots; another way is to switch the heels, that is, to shorten the hair without leaving any mark of the scissors - the groom seizes the hair and cuts off a certain portion in the same manner that he shortens a switch tail; the third mode is to pull the long hairs out by the roots. Switching and pulling, which is little practised, are generally confined to the foot-lock; some neat operators combine these different modes so well, that the hair is rendered thin and short without presenting any very visible marks of the alteration. By means of an iron comb with small teeth and a pair of good scissors, the hair may be shortened without setting it on end or leaving scissor marks, but every groom can not do this.

There has been considerable difference of opinion as to the propriety of trimming the heels. Some contend that the long hair soaks up the moisture, keeps the skin long wet and cold, producing grease, sores, cracks, and scurfiness; by others this is denied; they affirm that the long hair, far from favoring the production of these evils, has a tendency to prevent them. But there is another circumstance to be taken into consideration, and that accounts sufficiently for the difference of opinion.

When the horse is carefully tended after his work is over, his legs quickly and completely dried, the less hair he has about them the better. The moisture which that little takes up can be easily removed: both the skin and the hair can be made perfectly dry before evaporation begins, or proceeds so far as to deprive the legs of their heat. It is the cold produced by evaporation that does all the mischief; and if there be no moisture to create evaporation, there can be no cold - no loss of heat, save that which is taken away by the air. If there were more hair about the heels, they could not be so soon nor so easily dried. If the man requires ten minutes to dry one leg, the last will have thirty minutes to cool; if he can dry each in two minutes, the last will have only six minutes to cool, and in that time it can not become so cold as to be liable to grease. Whenever, therefore, the legs must be dried by manual labor, they should have little hair about them.

* The word heel is applied to the back and hollow of the pastern. In this place, all that is said of the heels is applicable to the legs.

But in coaching and posting-studs, and among cart-horses, the men can not, or will not bestow this care upon the legs; they have not time, and they would not do it if they had time. A team of four horses, perhaps, comes in at once, the legs all wet, and, it may be, the whole skin drenched in rain. Before eight of the legs can be rubbed dry, the other eight have become almost dry of themselves, and are nearly as cold as they can be. These horses should never have the heels trimmed : they can not have too much hair about them. They do indeed soak up a great deal of water, and remain wet for a much longer time than those that are nearly naked; but still they never become so soon nor so intensely cold. Evaporation can not proceed so rapidly; the vapor is entangled among the hair, and can not escape all at once. The evaporating process proceeds for a long time, but so slowly that the skin has time to furnish the necessary quantity of heat before it becomes very cold. If these horses had naked heels, there would be little difficulty in drying them; but the little trouble it requires is too much, and then it must be repeated as the water trickles from the body downward, making the legs as wet as ever; but in truth the men can not get them all dried before some become cold.

Possibly this explanation may be considered as insufficient. I can appeal to observation. During two very wet winters I have paid particular attention to the subject. My practice has brought it before me whether I would or not; I have had opportunity of observing the results of trimming and of no-trimmiag, among upward of five hundred horses. Nearly three hundred of these are employed at coaching and posting, or work of a similar kind, and about one hundred and fifty are cart-horses. Grease, and the other skin diseases of the heels, have been of most frequent occurrence where the horses were both trimmed and washed; they have been common where the horses were trimmed but not washed; and there have been very few cases where washing and trimming were forbidden or neglected. I do not include horses that always have the best of grooming; they naturally have little hair about the legs, and some of that is often removed; their legs are always washed after work, but they are always dried before they have time to cool.

If, then, the horse have to work often and long upon wet or muddy roads, and can not have his legs completely dried immediately after work, and kept dry in the stable, and not exposed to any current of cold air, he must not have his heels trimmed. In most well-regulated coaching stables, this operation and washing are both forbidden.