DISTRIBUTION OF THE WEIGHT OF THE BODY 91 



exertion. Such an animal will be a poor feeder, and will not last long. 

 All these are great imperfections if he is called upon to perform laborious 

 services. . . . The xiplioid region (pit of the stomach) should descend 

 several fingers' breadth below the elbow, the ribs should he round, the chest 

 wide behind, and a head wide in its middle part. The abdomen should l)e 

 full, quite cylindrical, and a head thick from its inferior line to the middle 

 of the back. 



" As to the limbs, they cannot be too strong. As soon as such seems to 

 be the case, the reason of it is that the upper part is not in proportion. 



" If the supports of the motor are slender, weak, too long, and ill-ad- 

 justed — in a word, disjiroportionate in relation with the weight, . . . the 

 most irreproachable body will be powerless; the machine will be without 

 force, without solidity, without speed, and destined soon to wear out. 



" Our way of ascertaining their disproportion consists in measuring the 

 distance between the passage of the girth and the pastern -joint. It is 

 known that, in a beautiful conformation, this distance is equal to a head in 

 horses of ordinary size, a little longer in large horses, and a little less in 

 small ones." (Goubaux and Barrier.) 



DISTRIBUTION OF THE WEIGHT OF THE BODY 



The weight of the body is borne by the fore and hind limbs, but its 

 distribution between these two pairs of supports is not, as might be sup- 

 posed, equally shared by them. The experiments of General Morris go 

 to show, that with the head elevated and occupying a natural position, 

 the proportion of body-weight sustained by the fore extremities is aliout 

 one-ninth, or, eleven per cent greater than that supported by the hind 

 ones. This difference in the disposition of the weight before and behind 

 is capable of considerable modification. It is found that when the head is 

 raised and drawn backward the weight imposed on the hind extremities 

 is increased from 4 to 10 kilogrammes, from which the fore extremities 

 are at the same time relieved. If, on the other hand, the head l)e 

 lowered and drawn towards the chest, a like amount of weight is dis- 

 placed forward. 



Horses with long necks add more to the weight of the fore extremity 

 than those whose necks are short and thick. 



The following table, taken from Goubaux and Barrier's exhaustive 

 work, gives the results which General Morris obtained in a series of 

 experiments performed to establish the relative weight of the fore and 

 hind extremity of the body. 



