Note 58 — Chapter VIII

A plan has recently been successfully adopted for drying horses after hunting. Two men, one on each side, throw over him buckets of water as hot as he can bear it: he is then scraped and rubbed with chamois leather, the head and ears carefully dried with a rubber, and his clothing put on. In twenty minutes he is perfectly dry, and there is no fear of his breaking out again: the old plan of rubbing him dry took from one to two hours of very hard work, and he generally broke out once or twice, and would often be found in a profuse sweat at twelve or one o’clock at night. The bath might be adopted for horses. The Muscovites used to mount from the dinner table on horseback; at present we shampoo our horses, and clear off the epidermis, while we bestow no such care on our own bodies.