ANIMAL FORM AN INDEX OF QUALITIES. 367 



" Bakewell strongly insisted on the advantage of 

 small bones, and the celebrated John Hunter declared 

 that small bones were generally attended with corpu- 

 lence in all the various subjects he had an opportunity 

 of examining." * 



Mr. Henry Cline, an English surgeon, says : " The 

 strength of an animal does not depend on the size of 

 the bones, but on that of the muscles. Many animals 

 with large bones are weak, their muscles being small. 

 Animals that were imperfectly nourished during 

 growth have their bones disproportionately large. If 

 such deficiency of nourishment originated from a con- 

 stitutional defect, which is the most frequent cause, 

 they remain weak during life. Large bones, there- 

 fore, generally indicate an imperfection in the organs 

 of nutrition" a 



The parts of the animal that are not deeply cov- 

 ered with flesh as the head, legs, and tail, together 

 with the horns, when present, and the hoofs, although 

 of but little value in themselves furnish the best 

 indications of the size, texture, and proportions, of the 

 bones throughout the entire system ; and in the im- 

 proved breeds they give an expression of refinement 

 and high quality to the otherwise massive structure 

 of the general organization. 



Improvements in this direction, however, have a 

 limit that cannot be safely passed, as an excessive re- 

 finement of the bony tissues is often accompanied by 

 a delicacy of constitution that predisposes the system 

 to disease from exciting causes that would have little 



1 Sinclair's " Code of Agriculture," p. 88. 



2 " Breeding and Form of Domestic Animals," p. 7. 



