HINTS ON SELECTION, CARE AND MANAGEMENT OF HORSES. 



105 



gait with insufficient muscle, but the natural impulse of the horse to 

 strike a gallop when he wants to travel faster may be so constrained by 

 certain leverage in rear development as to make the artificial gait a 

 second nature, breaking only when the brain is worried or the speed is 

 carried past the limit which the horse can reach. 



"The motion of the hind legs, from the fetlocks up, is modified by 

 four distinct true levers, each one more or less complex in action one 

 especially remarkable; the muscles from the haunch or hip bone and 

 the Illiac fossa extend in two directions downward to the stifle, and 

 down and backward to the leg bone (Tibia) and the hock. The upper 

 thigh bone (Femur) works at upper end against the lower portion of the 

 Illium in connection with the other pelvic bones, and the muscles run- 

 ning downward from the hip, together with the bones of upper thigh 



and leg, form a double compound lever really two in purpose moving 

 separately or jointly in obedience to the brain's direct or reflex action. 

 The muscles of the lower thigh which flex the cannon on the leg, 

 present a simple lever of the third class (power between weight and 

 fulcrum) combined with pulley action of the tendons at the hock exactly 

 corresponding to the leverage in front which bends the cannon on the 

 fore-arm. (See illustration Rear Leverage.) 



" If the distance from hip to hock be fairly long in reference to the 

 lower thigh, the horse will stand with straiter leg at rest, and the hock 

 will swing in trotting almost underneath the stifle, somewhat with the 

 motion of a pendulum. Such are called 'line trotters,' and our best ex- 

 amples bear the blood of Hambletonian through his son Electioneer. 

 Nearly all Electioneers reach out in front and trot directly on a line be- 



