130 BITS AND BITTING. 



the jaw coming in contact with the latter, a jam ensues 

 before the head can be brought round to the proper 

 angle. But this is perhaps a less frequent, and certainly 

 a less serious, occurrence than another to which we 

 must now advert. 



A horse may have a moderate-sized or even a small 

 head, and the depth of jaw alluded to above may be 

 so trifling as not to offer the slightest impediment to 

 the former assuming any position that may be desired, 

 but the jaws may both converge inwards, instead of 

 diverging slightly, as they should; Consequently the 

 space contained between the two jaws is narrowed in, 

 which prevents the neck fitting into this cavity to the 

 same extent as it will in a perfectly well-shaped head. 

 The angle of flection in such narrow- jawed horses is 

 very limited indeed, and becomes a serious impediment 

 to the breaking-in and bitting of the animal. 



There is another case still worse than this, and not 

 unfrequently combined with it in fact, the narrow- 

 ness of the jaws very frequently becomes its exciting 

 cause. Most persons conversant with horses must be 

 aware that certain glands lie just under the angles of 

 the two jaws, and run up in the direction of the ear. 

 They are the seat of the affection peculiar to young 

 animals known under the name of " strangles." Now 

 it is by no means unfrequent, especially amongst the 

 commoner kind of horses, to find these glands large and 

 flabby in their textures. With well-bred and well- 

 formed animals it is often very difficult to find them 

 at all under the skin. Sometimes the abnormal size 

 of these glands is evidently constitutional, sometimes 

 it is a consequence of disease strangles, for instance 

 and sometimes it arises wholly from the pressure of 



