PASTERN. 



291 



legs, shown in Fig. 353, appear very upright ; they 

 belonged to a horse which galloped in good style, and 

 jumped (Figs. 224 to 228) with great cleverness and 

 " flippancy," on all kinds of ground. The abnormal up- 

 rightness of his pasterns when he was standing, in no way 

 prevented his fetlock and pastern joints from having free 

 play during movement. The obvious lesson, here, is that 

 shape should not be studied independently of action. 



i'/t,^(,. I'll] [F. Al-maiT SCIIWAIIZ, IJKKT.IN, 



Fig. 369. — Schleswig cart mare, llansa. (17 hands high.) 



We may accept, as an a.xiom, the statement that the harder 

 the ground and the faster the work, the more sloping 

 should the pasterns be, in order to save the legs from the 

 injurious effects of concussion (p. 73). If the horse be 

 required to gallop over hard ground, the pasterns can 

 hardly be too oblique (supposing, of course, that this 

 condition has not been brought on by injury) ; provided 

 always that the pastern bones are strong. Fig. 356 shows 

 an extreme case of sloping pasterns in an Arab pony that 



19* 



