18 FORM AND ACTION. 



A neck disproportionately long will, according as it is well or ill 

 carried, detract more or less from the symmetrical beauty of the 

 fore parts : at the same time that it is operating in rendering the 

 head more burdensome than if it were a shorter projecture from 

 the body, on account of the increase of leverage. A favourite 

 exclamation of Professor Coleman's was, " Give me a horsa that 

 will starve at grass ;" thereby meaning, a horse having a neck so 

 short that, from not being able to reach the grass, he was incapa- 

 ble, or nearly so, of getting his living by grazing. Such extreme 

 and disproportionable shortness of neck, however, although advan- 

 tageous in the light in which it was viewed by the Professor, viz. 

 decrease of leverage, is on some other accounts by no means desir- 

 able. It is perhaps an objection to a horse with a very short neck, 

 and legs at all long, that he cannot but with difficulty get his liv- 

 ing by grazing ; but a greater objection to such shortness is, that a 

 horse so made can hardly by any training in the manege be made 

 to ride well. The neck is too short and too thick — the two pro- 

 perties generally go together — to admit of the required flexion, and 

 the consequence is, the head cannot, by any perseverance in rein- 

 ing or bitting, be drawn into its proper position. The horse will 

 ride piggishly — go boring forward, perhaps with his nose out, and 

 make that sort of continual dead pull on the hand that gives his rider 

 the sensation of his inevitably falling down at the first blunder in 

 action he happens to make. A horse's neck that is short is not only, 

 commonly, broad and thick as well, but, moreover, is combined with 

 strong shoulders, thereby rendering him a great deal more fit for the 

 harness-collar than for the saddle : such shortness and thickness in 

 the neck, and strength in the shoulders, being for harness attended 

 with many advantages. The bull-neck, as it is called, is proverbial 

 for strength, and strength of a kind which appears well adapted for 

 draught. In Spain and Portugal the oxen are yoked to the bullock- 

 cars by their horns, which by leathern thongs are lashed to the pole 

 of the car ; and thus, by strength of neck alone almost, do they 

 move forward with their loads, and, to appearance, with as much 

 facility and effect as though they were — as in our own country — in 

 harness-collars. Nothing can demonstrate power in the neck bet- 

 ter than this; at the same time that it shews us that the com- 

 monly received notion, " the neck should be lean," is erroneous. 



