Yet any stable, warmed by the heat of horses, however carefully cleaned, is fouled by their dung and water, and so becomes a forcing house to breed disease unless one removes the walls. There should be no walls, but the {217} stable should be built like a Japanese house with transparent and portable screens, close fitting against draughts; which can be set up on two windward sides with every shift of the weather. By no other means can the diseases be swept away which make the stabled horse a byword for unsoundness. [Sidenote: Paved floor] If regions of hardest ground produce the best legs and hoofs, it does not follow that stables ought to be paved. Natural ground however hard is springy, but pavement is dead hard and slippery at that. The English horseman explains "It haint the 'unting as 'urts the 'orses 'oofs, but the 'ammer, 'ammer, 'ammer, on the 'ard 'igh road." All who have seen the strains and tensions of cowpunching and noted the perfect soundness of cow ponies will agree that it haint the 'unting. But anybody who watches English horsemen with pleasure horses has noted the exceeding care with which they are ridden on the dirt rather than on the crown of a road, on the grass by the road rather than on the highways, and on any open route across country, rather than on the roadside. They get very much less hard going than the average range horse. The draught horse may suffer from the highway, but certainly not the hunter who is equally unsound. {218} Yet both have standings as a rule on a paved floor for not less than eighteen hours out of the average twenty-four. [Sidenote: The stable floor] A notable difference between the sound outdoor horse and the unsound indoor horse is in this matter of standing, for the range animal visits but does not live in a stable, while the unsound animal spends three fourths of his time on a hard pavement. I have noticed also in travel that when I brought weary horses to a stable with a wooden floor their pasterns always swelled over night. On a metalled or paved floor the swelling was almost as bad as on wood, whereas on earthern standings there was never the slightest trace of inflammation. In recent handling of some sixty army horses I took them from pasture to horse lines without noting much unsoundness on either ground. Unsoundness developed when I took them to paved stalls, but was much diminished when I moved them to earth-floored sheds. I find too that notable horsemasters have removed the pavements from their stables in favour of clean, dry, well-drained earth standings; or, failing that, lay bedding a foot deep.