NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 129 



LONG TAILS FOR HORSES. I once measured the tail of a 

 hearse horse, \vhich I observed when attending a funeral. 

 It was no less than six feet in length. I presume the fashion 

 of driving long-tailed horses has been handed down from 

 the olden times, perhaps from the days of Queen Anne, 

 when all the swell carriage-horses wore long tails. There is 

 a legend that people at Oxford who let out grazing fields 

 for horses in the long vacation charge more for a long-tailed 

 horse than for a short-tailed one, because the long-tailed ones 

 eat more than the others, which are obliged to waste much time 

 in driving off the flies, while the long-tailed horses keep off the 

 flies with their tails and eat continuously. I cannot help 

 expressing a wish that some of our aristocratic carriage-owners 

 would set the example of net continuing to disfigure their horses 

 by cutting their tails. In addition to a moderately long tail 

 being a great ornament to a horse, it is also of great use to the 

 animal, by enabling him to brush off flies, especially if at any 

 time he should happen to be turned out into a field, or if he is 

 in a stable in the country, where flies are more numerous and 

 troublesome than in London. I believe that the custom of cut- 

 ting short the tails of horses has been adopted merely because, 

 if they were longer, the grooms would have a little more trouble 

 in combing and washing them. I do not know of any good reason 

 why the tails of saddle-horses should not be also allowed to 

 grow longer than they usually are in the present day. 



INTELLIGENCE OF HORSES DEPENDENT ON THE SIZE OF THE 

 BRAIN. A man that trains canary birds and exhibits a perform- 

 ing hare in the streets, tells me that he always selected a hare 

 for a pupil which had a large head ; all hares were not equally 

 capable of instruction. When in the 2nd Life Guards, I used 

 often to watch the officers' horses and the troopers, to see if the 

 horses which had broad foreheads knew their drill better than 

 the small fronted horses, and I fancy that the larger brained 

 horses were the more clever of the two. At a dinner party at 

 Aldermaston Park, I met a gentleman who has many hunters, 

 and I asked him kindly to measure his horses' foreheads, taking 

 the upper measurement between the temporal fossre, and the 

 lower between the orbits of the eye ; the following is his answer. 

 " I have measured four of my horses' heads in the places you 

 wished : 



Temporal fossee. Orbits of eye. 



1. Beauty (an intelligent mare).... measures 5Jin 8$in. 



2. Rocket (a fearful puller) 5 8 



3. Hawkeye (a big fool) 4} 8 



4. Bella Donna (a calm quiet animal) 5 8 



VOL. II. S 



