12 RIDING FOR LADIES, 



can hardly be too deep, but it can be too wide, or have too 

 great breadth between the fore-legs. The back only long 

 enough to find room for the saddle is the rule, though, in 

 case of a lady's horse, a trifle more length unaccompanied by 

 the faintest sign of weakness, will do no harm. For speed, 

 a horse must have length somewhere, and I prefer to see it 

 below, between the point of the elbow and the stifle joint, 

 Ormonde, " the horse of the century," was nearly a square, 

 i.e. the height from the top of the wither to the ground 

 almost equalled the length of his body from the point of the 

 shoulder to the extremity of the buttock. Horses with 

 short backs and short bodies are generally biuk-kapers, and 

 difficult to sit on when fencing. The couplings or loins 

 cannot be too strong or the ribs too well sprung ; the back 

 ribs well hooped. This formation is a sign of a good 

 constitution. The quarters must needs be full, high set on, 

 with straight crupper, well rounded muscular buttocks, a 

 clean channel, with big stifles and thighs to carry them. 

 Knees and hocks clean, broad, and large, back sinews and 

 ligaments standing well away from the bone, flat and hard 

 as bands of steel ; short well-defined smooth cannons ; 

 pasterns nicely sloped, neither too long nor too short, but 

 full of spring; medium sized feet, hard as the nether 

 millstone. If possible, I should select one endowed with 

 the characteristic spring of the Arab's tail from the crupper. 

 Such a horse would, in the words of Kingsley, possess " the 

 beauty of Theseus, light but massive, and light, not in spite 

 of its masses, but on account of the perfect disposition of 

 them." 



There is no need for the judge to run the rule, or the tape 

 either, over the horse. His practised eye, almost in a glance, 

 will take in the general contour of the animal ; it will tell 

 him whether the various salient and important points 



