The stable book Author:John Stewart Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: FlO. 3. jury when they chance to fall upon a horse's legs or back. Well-seasoned oak forms a bale of sufficient durability. Two or three of cast-iron may be k... more »ept and placed beside those horses that are much disposed to bite and destroy the wooden bale. One is placed between each pair of horses. It should be three feet or three feet and a half from the ground. The suspending chains should be about three or four inches long, so that the bale may yield as the horse comes against it in turning round. Bales are employed in almost all the cavalry stables. There, they are furnished with a contrivance which merits notice. It prevents accidents, which are very common in baled stables. The extremity next the manger is not, or need not, be removable ; the other, next the heel-post, is attached in such a way that when a horse gets under the bale, and attempts to rise, he pushes it upward, and it loses its connexion with the post; or when he happens to cast his leg over the bale, it can instantly be lowered to the ground without lifting the horse. Fig. 4 represents the means by which this is effected ; a is the bale ; b a curved bolt by which it is attached to the post. This turns round upon the post, like the hand of a clock. It is retained in its usual place by the ring c, which chapter{Section 4Fio. 4. slides upon the bracket d. When the bale is to be let down, the ring is raised, and the bolt b turns and frees the bale. The engraving, Fig. 3, shows the manner in which the bale is released when a horse gets under it. An iron bale, when thrown off in this way, is likely to be broken, or to injure the next horse. This engraving, I may mention, was taken from one of the cavalry stables at Glasgow barracks. There are Objections to Bales.—They permit the horses to bite, and to ...« less