100 THE HORSE IN MOTION. 



While the former, like a pair of oars at work in a boat, are plying for- 

 wards and backwards, forcing the body onward, the latter, more like 

 stilts, are employed in sustaining the propelling parts, lest the body fall 

 forward to the ground. I have likewise afore observed, that two such 

 different functions necessarily distress different parts of the limbs, 

 the hock being the part most exerted in the hind, the feet and legs the 

 parts most tried in the fore limbs. What distresses the sinews of the 

 fore limbs so much is the extreme distension, almost preternatural, to 

 which these legs are put in hard galloping and leaping every time the 

 weight of the body descends upon them, at a moment when they are 

 stretched out to their utmost, as they must be, to receive it ; and it is 

 to this identical position of the limb, whenever any weight or force 

 of extraordinary amount, or in any sudden or unexpected manner, 

 descends upon it, that strain or sprain is produced." * 



It is now perfectly clear that it is in their action as propellers 

 that the flexors of the fore leg become injured in their tendons, and 

 in the position shown in Fig. 12; though there is little doubt that 

 if the weight of the rider were not superimposed to that of the horse, 

 this accident would rarely happen. Sprains involving the ligaments 

 of the joints may occur at any time when the foot from any cause is 

 not set squarely upon the ground, but this is an accident of quite a 

 different nature from that to which reference is made above. 



We have designated the pace under consideration as the run, 

 the pace used in racing, or the fastest known to the horse and other 

 domestic animals. What, then, is the gallop ? If we are to be con- 

 fined to the definition of the gallop given in the dictionaries, and 

 generally accepted by all writers on the horse, we are forced to the 

 conclusion that there is no such pace, that it is a fiction. Webster 

 defines the gallop as " a mode of progression by quadrupeds, par- 

 ticularly by a horse, by lifting alternately the fore feet and the hind 

 feet together, in successive leaps or bounds " ; and Worcester, " to 

 move forward as a horse by such leaps that the hind legs rise before 

 the fore legs quite reach the ground." That the pace which we call 

 the run is not such as will bear the definition given is very clear. 



* Hippopathology, Vol. IV. p. 346. 





