LESSONS IN HORSE JUDGING. 



13 



The natural stimulants of the muscle are the 

 nerves (Fig. 1. n n), the little white cords which 

 you see running in various directions among the 

 muscles or flesh, and which come from the brain 

 and the spinal cord. If you had to apply a gal- 

 vanic battery to a muscle, before long you would 



Figure 1. 



A B D 





exhaust aU its irritability, that is, in time it would 

 cease to contract, showing that there is only a cer- 

 tain amount of irritability in the muscle. If all 

 the muscles of the body contract at the same time, 

 the whole body is perfectly rigid or stiff, a thing 

 we never see in health, but which we see in a 

 modified state after death, and which is called 

 rigor mortis. This general stiffness, or rigor mor- 

 tis, comes on as the body cools: the cold acting as 



