310 THE EXTERIOR OF THE HORSE. 



covered by a thick skin provided with hairs more or less abundant and coarse, 

 according to the fineness of the animal. 



Before presenting a pleasure-horse for sale, they usually clip his 

 hairs in order to give to the members a certain appearance of lightness. 

 But neither horses of the finer races nor heavy-draught horses are, as 

 a rule, subjected to this practice, because in the former the hairs are 

 short and fine, and in the latter they constitute an apparatus of pro- 

 tection of which it is unjust to deprive the horse. 



In the army it is prohibited to dress the hairs over the parts cor- 

 responding to the pastern, in order to protect them as much as 

 possible against the injuries so frequent during the manoeuvres. 



Beauties. The only points of this region are the width, the fine- 

 ness, and the freedom from blemishes. 



The first implies a correlative width of the phalanges and the 

 firmness of the member. The second consists in the thinness of the 

 skin and the delicacy of the hairs ; it indicates the ancestry, the tem- 

 perament, the energy, and the vigor of the horse. As to the third, it 

 implies a perfect regularity of the parts and the absence of diseases 

 and blemishes. 



Diseases and Blemishes. The coronet, like all the other infe- 

 rior regions of the members, shows numerous alterations which involve 

 either the skin and the subcutaneous connective tissue, the tendons, or 

 the bones. Their gravity necessarily depends upon the nature of the 

 lesions, their location, their period of existence, and the interference 

 which they offer to the locomotory function. 



These are first calks, deep wounds of the skin, of a variable extent, which 

 result from the contact of the feet in some circumstances, as on the race-course 

 or in leaping over obstacles, for example. 



Grease or water in the legs, already cited in the description of the canon, the 

 fetlock, and the pastern, often begins at the coronet, whose hairs it agglutinates 

 into small pencils of a bristly aspect which is quite peculiar, and which is vulgarly 

 compared with a comb. 



Contusions and other traumatisms produce, at times, deep alterations of the 

 lateral cartilages, the tendons, the glomes of the plantar cushion, or even the 

 skin, and give rise to a partial necrosis of these structures, known under the 

 generic name quitter. A quitter may be tendinous, cartilaginous, or cutaneous, 

 according to the tissue involved. In general, they should be considered as being 

 grave, for they incapacitate the animal from service for a long time and com- 

 promise his very life by the complications which accompany them. (See Foot.) 



The anterior face of the coronet is sometimes the seat of an affection called 

 crapaudine, which is characterized by a peculiar modification of the secretory 

 function of the coronary band, which becomes fissured and cracked after the 

 manner of the bark of an old tree. (See Foot.) 



