Now although a horse highly fed and in good wind and condition has greater muscular power than those in the state of nature just described, it is undeniable that the difference between carrying weight and no weight must produce in each of them similar results; that is to say, those muscles which are oppressed suffer by the amount of weight inflicted upon them, multiplied by the time they are subjected to it, and again negatively enjoy the periods of rest, be they ever so short, during which they are relieved from it.
And yet, although every body learns by daily experience that the imposition of weight tires his own muscles, that the abstraction of weight instantly relieves them; and although it is a known fact that when two thorough-bred horses are racing together, an addition of only seven pounds weight will cause the bearer of it to be "distanced," yet men of rank, intelligence, wealth, and generous feelings, are, at the outside of a covert which the hounds are drawing, to be constantly seen late in the day with cigars in their mouths, conversing and occasionally even extolling to each other the qualifications of the noble animals on whose backs they have been thoughtlessly sitting for six or eight hours, as hard as a hen upon a nest full of eggs just about to hatch.
In the army when a soldier who has committed an offence is sentenced to crawl for several hours up and down a parade "in heavy marching order," it is justly called "_punishment drill_."
In like manner, if an unruly horse were to be sentenced merely to stand in his stable for ten hours with a sack of heavy oats, weighing (at forty-two pounds the bushel) exactly twelve stone, the punishment or pain his muscles would undergo in bearing such a weight for so long a time would be so severe that by almost everybody it would be termed "cruel." But if, instead of being quiescent, the sack of oats could by mechanical contrivances be continually lifted up, and then by a series of heavy blows dropped down upon vertebræ which have nothing but muscles to support them, the punishment would be condemned as excruciating; and yet this excruciating punishment is quite unnecessarily inflicted upon hunters by a lot of good-humoured heavy men, simply from neglecting to reflect that if they would, only even for a minute or two, occasionally unload their saddles, to walk a little, stand still a little, or, while the hounds are drawing, sit placidly upon the stile or gate that is often close beside them, they would not only perform an act of mercy, but they would impart or rather restore strength, tone, and activity to muscles which, if vigorous, can carry them safely, but which, if exhausted, must inevitably fail when tested by a severe run.