POSTERIOR MEMBER. 295 



delicacy of the skin and of the hairs which cover it, spareness of the 

 subcutaneous connective tissue, and the precise and clean delimitation 

 of all its parts. It is considered as an index of quality, temperament, 

 energy, and vigor. When it is not thus the region is called puffy. In 

 this respect, horses of the finer races approach those of the common 

 races according to the condition they are kept in. We have known a 

 rather large number which, working in low and moist countries, or-npon 

 muddy and filthy soil, had in the long run acquired long and abundant 

 hairs and more or less thickened extremities. 



Absence of Blemishes. The fetlock is dean when it is exempt 

 from blemishes and from diseases. The rationale of this beauty will 

 be apparent from what follows. 



Diseases and Blemishes. From the situation which the fetlock 

 occupies, numerous diseases, acute and chronic, as well as accidents, 

 may affect it, which depreciate the animal in different ways. 



The skin, first, is often the seat of excoriations, contusions, and wounds, most 

 frequent on the inner side, and resulting generally from injuries which the sub- 

 ject inflicts on himself during locomotion. It is then said that the horse over- 

 reaches, interferes, cuts himself, strikes himself; he is usually affected with a defec- 

 tive axis of the parts, and ordinarily has an ungraceful gait. (See Defects of the 

 Gaits.) 



Like the knee, the fetlock becomes more or less gravely lacerated on its 

 anterior face in consequence of falls upon hard and irregular soil. 



At other times it presents cicatrices, callosities, or traces of the actual cautery 

 in points or in lines of a variable extent and configuration. 



The integument sometimes, but more rarely, offers an abundant, fetid exuda- 

 tion, which transudes from warty excrescences called fid, and agglutinates the 

 scattered hairs over the diseased surface. This disease, known under the names 

 of water in the legs, grapes, fid, and grease, etc., is an index of a soft constitution 

 and a lymphatic temperament, dependent most often upon bad hygiene. It is 

 regarded as grave on account of its chronic state, its tendency to ascend into the 

 region of the canon or descend towards that of the foot, of the putrid odor which 

 it gives off, and of the tenacity which it offers against all means of treatment. 



The connective tissue is frequently the seat of oedema, cysts, hcematoma, 

 (blood-tumors), abscesses, lymphangitis, fistulous wounds, etc., occasioned by very 

 diverse causes, to concern ourselves with which would be beyond our province, 

 the acute character of all these affections being given. 



It is not the same, however, with cystic tumors, which are met either on the 

 internal or on the anterior face, and which proceed nearly always from repeated 

 contusions during locomotion. The cyst on the anterior face, sometimes very 

 voluminous, produces an abnormal convexity of the region, when it is viewed 

 in profile. This swelling is indolent, uniformly fluctuating and somewhat tense, 

 whatever may be the attitude of the member, which permits it to be diagnosed 

 from a synovial dilatation. It is not serious, but constitutes a decided blemish 

 in pleasure-horses, in consequence of the deformity which it entails. 



