CONFORMATION 181 



tion when the ground is hard. Such pasterns afford dehght- 

 fully easy paces, when the animal is required as a hack. 



The curious callosities known respectively as chestnuts 

 and ergots must not be overlooked. The former are 

 universal, and are placed on each limb, being of a tough, 

 leather-like substance, the use of which is not definitely 

 known ; though it has been suggested they have formerly 

 been glands which secreted an odour, by which animals 

 separated from their comrades were enabled to track one 

 another. They are very rarely absent, and the writer has 

 only known one case. This was in a chestnut colt, bred by 

 himself in 1898 by Queen's Counsel out of Lunette by 

 Napsbury, who was born without chestnuts on his front 

 limbs. Ergots are hard protuberances growing from tufts 

 of hair behind the fetlocks, and are of identical material 

 with the horn of the sole. There is nothing to indicate 

 what their original function may have been. Both chestnuts 

 and ergots are liable to grow sufficiently large to become 

 unsightly, when they should be trimmed down with the 

 blacksmith's knife to reasonable dimensions. 



A few horses develop bony excrescences on the forehead, 

 which are looked upon as horns, but they have no true core, 

 and do not penetrate the skin. It is a curious circumstance 

 that a colt who was the playmate of the colt " Crown 

 Glass," mentioned above, and foaled in the same year, also 

 made himself conspicuous by developing horns when he 

 was six years old. This was Shepherd Lord, a brown, by 

 Wellington, out of Lady Bo-Peep by Hagioscope. As both 

 were subjected to an operation there was no chance of 

 seeing whether they would have perpetuated their abnormal 

 characteristics. 



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