68 



CONFORMATION AND ITS DEFECTS 



As organs of propulsion they exercise but slight influence as compared 

 with the hind - limbs. Their greatest efforts in this connection are 

 developed in heavy draught (fig. 51), when "the body strongly in- 

 clined forward gives the foredegs an oblique direction backward, which 



permits them to jjush 

 against the collar to 

 which the shoulders 

 are energetically ap- 

 plied. It is by the 

 extension or opening 

 out of all the articu- 

 lar angles previously 

 semi -flexed that the 

 fore-limbs are able to 

 accomplish this result. 

 When they are di- 

 rected obliquely and 

 in an inverse direc- 

 tion, as is seen some- 

 times at the begin- 

 ning of the effort of traction, the force wdiich they exercise upon the trunk, 

 and therefore against the collar, is at its minimum. Traction forward can 

 be favourably executed only when the foot directed backward is fixed 

 against the roughness of the ground. This is observed in the draught- 

 horse as he moves his load; when the soil, the point of suj^port, gives 

 way, the feet suddenly glide backward." (Goubaux and Barrier.) 



THE SHOULDER 



Copyright 1887 by Eadweard Muybridge. From "Animals in Motion" (Cliapman & Hall) 



Fig. 51. — Oblique Position of the Limbs in drawing a Load 



Of all the parts of a horse none perhaps come in for so much criticism 

 as the shoulder, and having regard to the influence it is capa1)]e of 

 exercising over the various phases of locomotion, and in safeguarding 

 the integrity of the limbs with wdiich it is connected, no wonder can 

 be entertained that it should be made so much a matter of concern to 

 the breeder, the dealer, and the user of horses. 



In this, as in most other rea;ions, no single design can be made to 

 meet all purposes, and between the two extremes of conformation which 

 lend themselves respectively to speed and power some variation will neces- 

 sarily be found to exist. The measure of mechanical perfection either in 

 regard to the one requirement or the other being incapaltle of accomplish- 

 ment, it must suffice to indicate the more salient features identified with each. 



