THE CHEST. 31 



ended in suffocation and death of the animal. It was only the 

 judicious and well-arranged combination of bone and gristle in the 

 construction of the chest that could answer all the various ends 

 an all-wise Providence had in view. 



The chest being the repository for the organs of respiration and 

 circulation — the lungs and heart — the grand point for the con- 

 sideration of the horseman, in judging of a horse in respect to it, 

 is, its form or its capacity, the one being inferred from the other. 

 It is natural to suppose that the largest lungs and heart inhabit the 

 largest chests, and, cceteris paribus, that horses possessing them 

 must also enjoy advantage in wind, as well as such other advan- 

 tages as are found to accrue from an ample respiration and circu- 

 lation : upon this, in fact, principally depend his powers of exer- 

 tion and endurance, as also his constitutional disposition to make 

 and maintain condition. Now, capacity of chest will be derived 

 from breadth, depth, and length of the cavity. 



Breadth of Chest is the result of circularity in the arches of 

 the ribs : hence a broad and a circular chest amount to the same 

 thing, or have only this difference, that, the breadth not being, 

 always in the part where it ought to be, may be present without or 

 with only a part of the circularity. For example, a horse that has 

 a circular chest will have thick or strong shoulders, and a broad back 

 and breast ; but in another, the ribs may curve well out from the 

 spine, giving breadth of back and thick shoulders, but afterwards 

 turn suddenly inward and proceed to the brisket with hardly any 

 further curvature ; the result of which is that such a formed chest 

 is defective, not only in depth, but in width likewise, except just at 

 the superior part. When the ribs proceed from the spine to the 

 breast-bone with very little arch or curvature outwards, the animal 

 becomes narrow-chested, or, as it is pertinently expressed, flat- 

 sided. In a well-formed chest the arches the ribs form from one 

 abutment to the other are pretty regularly elliptical, and at their 

 inferior ends are lengthened out so as to give as much depth to 

 the cavity as is compatible with the general fabric : the curvatures 

 of the ribs are conspicuous behind the elbows, and the rider feels 

 he has, when mounted, a good clutch between his legs. The broad 

 or circular chest being that which affords the most internal space — ■ 

 most room for the operations of the contained organs, out of which 



