398 THE EXTERIOR OF THE HORSE. 



and conservative power, a force inherent to the species, should be con- 

 sidered apart from the animal which possesses it. The latter may vary 

 and have very different external characters without the principle 

 which animates him ceasing to be perfectly identical, because it pos- 

 sesses in this connection an admirable scope of adaptation ; this is its 

 property. In it are all the perfections; it is the source of all the 

 special qualities. It is through this that it governs the species and is 

 their prototype." 



It is difficult to be more metaphysical and therefore less scientific ! 

 Physiologists exact more at the present time. This spiritualistic con- 

 ception deserves mention only from simple curiosity ; it is, in fact, more 

 than a century behind modern ideas ; there is therefore no reason to 

 consider it. 



Other horsemen, notably Magne, 1 consider the blood (sang) as a 

 combination of external characters proper to better finer races, 

 equally transmissible by heredity. 



We are mistaken as to the very essence of the question itself if 

 we believe that English or Arabian reproducers are capable of trans- 

 mitting only their conformation to the exclusion of all other qualities. 

 The blood is no more the conformation than it is the immaterial prin- 

 ciple spoken of above. 



A determined external form is of itself incapable of constituting 

 the blood ; it is only its substratum, its receptacle, and, for this reason, 

 may become its index. Now, as a horse cannot inherit noble qualities 

 without at the same time possessing the features which indicate them, 

 we see how it is that some have taken the containing part instead of 

 the thing contained, and misunderstood the true nature of blood. 



Origin of the Word "Blood." Whence does such an ex- 

 pression originate? Very probably from the ideas formerly enter- 

 tained upon fecundation. 



Hippocrates 2 (to go back no farther) was of the opinion that the 

 male and female each extracted from their own humors, during cop- 

 ulation, stronger parts, a kind of particular production of the organs, 

 which met each other in the genital female passage and constituted 

 the seeds, in each of which were found male and female germs. The 

 sexuality of the product depended upon the predominance of the one 

 over the other. As the strong parts were produced by the agita- 

 tion of the humors of the body, as these fluids were endowed with the 



1 J. H. Magne, Races chevalines, 3e 6d., p. 351. 



2 Hippocrate, Traite de la generation. 



