POINTS. 



407 



Any such improvement is always procured at a vast personal risk ; 

 for the head, being raised, partially throws the eyes out of use. It also 

 impedes the circulation, ruins the mouth, distorts the body, and deranges 

 the breathing. All these evils are inflicted to obtain the kind of pace 

 which is never natural, but which closely resembles the sort of step that 

 is characteristic of blindness in the horse. Few of the animals, thus 

 treated, live to descend very low in the scale of equine existence. They 

 mostly perish young; but the reader may recognize them drawing the 

 broughams of gentility, and too often presenting one of the cramped, 

 forced, and uneasy paces which are depicted below ; for into such kinds 

 of action all upon service ultimately subside. 



TERT FAULTY ACTIONS. 



On the other hand, the animal with a deep chest and with high 

 withers, almost as a accessary adjunct, possesses a slanting shoulder ; 

 or, at all events, this probabihty is favored by that particular formation. 

 Such an arrangement of parts must be accompanied by an upright 

 position of the humerus and the advanced location of the fore limb. 

 This conformation is bettered, materially, by an arched crest and a head 

 "well set on." Unfortunately, these latter points are seldom encoun- 

 tered, the proper disposition of the fore quarter being rarely attended 

 with the last-named grace. 



Such horses, however, Stubbs, the animal painter, used to delineate. 

 Either the artist was particularly fortunate in his models, or beauty has 

 been sacrificed in the anxiety to breed other properties. Such horses 

 appear to have been common in England when the racer was compelled 

 to possess endurance, and if report be truth, the last animals exhibited 

 a greater speed than their descendants can display. Hunters were for- 

 merly something better than the rejected of the course ; they could show 

 a beauty equal to their strength. Creatures with the forehand such as 

 has been described, are not only more pleasant to contemplate, but they 

 are also capable of working with far less exhaustion to the system. 



