PREFACE. 



Exact ideas on the Conformation of the Horse are not current either 

 in the traditions of our sporting people or in our hterature. The few 

 English authors who have written on it, have treated this important 

 subject in a fragmentary manner, and have contented themselves for 

 the most part with laying down rule-of-thumb maxims for the blind 

 acceptance of their readers. The French, on the contrary, have 

 written on L Extcrieitr du Cheval, several elaborate books upon which 

 they have expended an amount of scientific knowledge that does them 

 infinite credit ; but their works show that their experience has been 

 gained more in the study and dissecting room, than in the stable and 

 in the field, and they have made but little use of photography. As 

 illustrations of horses drawn without the aid of photography, have 

 a bias difficult to be repressed, they render the ideas of the artist 

 more accurately than they portray the realities of nature. 



About twenty-five years ago, while training, racing and steeple- 

 chasing in India, I began to write a book on the Points of the Horse, 

 which subject I resolved to treat according to the time-honoured 

 methods of my predecessors. Subsequently, I worked at it while study- 

 ing to become a veterinary surgeon, and while living at Newmarket, 

 ,where I went to increase my knowledge of English thorough-breds, 

 for which object I obtained every facility from many kind friends, 

 who were either owners or trainers, and who were always glad to show 

 me their horses, and discuss their various points. When the book was 

 completed in 1884, I despatched the manuscript to my publishers by 

 the hand of a friend, who, by an extraordinary piece of good luck, lost 



