The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-02-13
QUEER TASTES OF SOME HORSES.
Animals That Ate Beef and chewed
 T0haceo

Animals That Ate Beef and chewed
 Tobacco.
 Mr. Hardy, in the current number. under the caption of Cats Eating Corn" gives an instance Of a horse which ate cooked beef. have in mind some three different horses which may be said to have had a perverted appe- tite. One. a small half-breed Texas horse which I had for few months. would eat fresh piece of beef as large as a dinner plate and an inch thick. He ate it just as dog would, holding it down with his forefoot, then tearing of chunks of it and swallowing them. This appetite for fresh beef was so weil-known that none of it was ever left within his reach except by acci- dent. When it was, whoever left it nev- CT saw it again. The troop that first served in had horse that died in it when he was twenty-three years old. Seventeen of those years he had been put in with this troop. fifteen of them under the saddle. He had been shot several times, once through the neck and once in the flank; but neither shot had sent him to the rear. He never had been sick a day.
 The last two years of his life he spent on the retired list, but was still marked fit for duty in order to keep him there; any other horse would have been condemned and sold; but he was kept as matter of sentiment, and had nothing to do but eat and sleep. The only other horse that ever knew to be treated this way was the one which survived the Custer massacre; he was kept in troop of the Seventh cavalry until he died. He was saddled up and led out in every mounted inspection, but was never ridden by any one.
 This old horse of ours (we called him Bummer) was never tied in the daytime, but let go where he pleased. He paid regular visits to the cookhouse; there getting his head in the slop barrel, he would half empty the barrel. It did not seem to make any difference to him what he found there-bean soup, stale bread, cooked meat, or potato parings- all went. He did not need the stuff; he got just what the other horses got to eat twice day.
 Soon after the clyose of the war we were dismounted at Macon, Ga, and sent to Texas; here we got the old horses that the Eighteenth New York had been riding, and I kept a lookout for a sorrel, but the best I could get was a small sorrel mare. Mares are never used in time of peace, but for the last four years before this anything that could carry saddle would be used. We had three of these mares by the time we were all mounted. They had been captured" down south; none of them had been bought. My mare just suited me; she could carry me fifty miles day; then carry me back again next day if I wanted her to do it. had her about two days when | found out that she chewed tobacco. She grabbed a small package of fine cut out of my hand, and then stood chewing it, apper and all Seeing that it did not hurt her. kept her in tobacco buying the leaf tobacco that all the Mexican stores sold here then,a large "hand' of it for a silver dime; that would not have paid the duty on it had any been paid, but the collector had not got there yet: when he did come these men had to stop selling it at any price. !. never went near my mare without bringing her tobacco; if she did not get it right away she would begin to shove me with her nose and keep it up until I gave her the usual chew When we were ordered to turn in o,ii. mares a few months af ter this parted with her with more re- gret than I have since felt when part ling with better horse than she was.
 I rode horse for four years. my racehorse Charley, which would eat half a peck of peaches as fast as could re- move the stones out of them The same horse could eat a pound of sugar or candy without even stopping. land Stream.