HISTORICAL. 345 



work, which dates from the first third of the fourteenth century of the Christian 

 era, the first vague, incomplete, and indeed incorrect indication of the measure- 

 ments concerning the proportions of the horse. We will confine ourselves to 

 this mention. 1 



Grisone. The origin of the idea of proportions is therefore wrongly 

 attributed to an Italian veterinarian of the sixteenth century, Frederico Grisone, 2 

 a very imperfect idea, too, for he attempts in his book, which treats -especially 

 of horsemanship, rather to determine the qualities of the parts than to express 

 their relations; he indicates the characters which, according to his opinion, 

 should constitute beauty ; besides these characters being in several respects very 

 disputable, and in others very erroneous, we do not see that he has felt the neces- 

 sity of comparing the regions with one another, and of expressing their rela- 

 tions with positive data. The establishment of the proportions, such as they 

 are understood at the present time, does not therefore belong to him. 



Bourgelat. To Bourgelat, then, belongs all the praise of this attempt. 

 He says 3 that, " since beauty resides in the fitness and agreement of the parts, it 

 is very necessary to observe their particular and respective dimensions ; and, to 

 acquire a knowledge of the proportions, we must institute a kind of measurement 

 which may be indiscriminately common to all horses. 



" The part which can be used as a basis of proportions for all others is the 

 head. Let us measure its length between two parallel lines, one tangent to the 

 nape of the neck, or to the top of the forelock, the other tangent to the extremity 

 of the superior lip, by a line perpendicular to these two parallel lines ; we will 

 thus obtain its geometrical length. Divide this length into three parts, and 

 give them a particular name which can be applied to all heads, as, for example, 

 that of prime. . . . But all the parts which we shall consider, either in their 

 length, height, or thickness, cannot constantly have either a whole prime, a prime 

 and a half, or three primes ; subdivide each prime into three equal parts, which 

 we will name seconds ; and as this subdivision is not sufficient to furnish us with 

 the correct measure of all the parts, we will again subdivide each second into 

 twenty-four points." 



The geometrical length of the head is then divided into 3 primes, 9 seconds, 

 or 216 points. Now, as this region may be defective in proportion, Bourgelat 

 had to seek for another unit. of measure in the height and in the length of the 

 body, which, in the well-formed horse, are equal to two and one-half times the 

 length of the head. By dividing one or the other of these dimensions into five 

 equal parts, and by taking two of these parts, he then established a unit of 

 measure such as the head would give if it were well proportioned. 



This being laid down, let us now detail the law of Bourgelat, that is to say, 



For more details, see : 1. Le Nac6ri ou Traite complet d'hippologie et d'hippiatrie arabes, 

 translated from the Arabian by M. Perron, t. ii. p. 96, Paris, 1859, chez Bouchard-Huzard ; 2. Le 

 Livre de 1'agricxilture d'Ibn-al-Awam, translated from the Arabian by J.-J. Clement-Mullet, 

 t. ii., 2d part, p. 33, Paris, 1866. This manuscript is older than the preceding. M. Clement-Mullet 

 wrote it in the twelfth century of our era. 



2 Frederico Grisone, Ordini di cavalcare et modi di conoscere le nature de cavalli. emendare 

 i vitii loro, et ammaestrargli per 1'uso della guerra et commodity de gli huomini, Venetia, 1558, 

 p. 5. 



3 C. Bourgelat, loc. cit., p. 199. 



