392 HOESE PORTRAITURE. 



further guards it. Length in the fore arm is as essential, or 

 more so, than in the corresponding bone in the hind leg. 

 It gives greater leverage, and enables the animal to cover 

 more ground in the stride. The large broad knee is nearly 

 indispensable to a fast horse, by giving more room for a 

 proper fastening of the tendons. 



Many hold that a small knee is the proper formation. 

 Examine Kentucky, Norfolk, or Asteroid, and I will war- 

 rant all three of them have broad, lathy knees. The bone 

 that projects from the back part of the knee should be 

 large and prominent. The back muscle is attached to this 

 by the tendon, and of course is more firmly bound to it 

 than if it were smaller. I have heard horses, with the tra- 

 pezium very prominent, called "cut away below the knee," 

 when their legs could not have been bettered. The knee 

 has a very important duty to peform in a trotter, and 

 unless a horse has the proper action in it, or acquires it, 

 he will never be likely to go fast. I have also heard people 

 find fault with a broad knee in a harness horse, arguing 

 that he would be more likely to strike it than if smaller, 

 the position of the limb has more to do with this than 

 5- he size of the joints, and where the legs are straight, 

 filing from the body as truly as those of the Falcon, it 

 will take very bad handling to endanger them. A short 

 cannon is* the usual accompaniment of a long fore arm. 

 The ligaments and tendons that convey the motion from 

 the muscles have an important duty to perform. They 

 should be large, giving the leg the flat appearance so de- 

 sirable, and no inequalities should be perceivable to the 

 eye, or be felt as the hand is passed down them. Their 

 size renders them less liable to strains, or rupture of the 

 delicate membrane that covers them, and a round, fair- 

 sized pastern-joint gives them a better fastening. The 

 long, springy pastern is of fully as much advantage in the 

 fore legs as in the hind, giving, as I said before, more free- 



