FORM AND ACTION. 5 



When I speak of largeness or bulk, I am not meaning fatness : 

 a fat horse is a proportionally weak horse. Adeps, or fat, is an 

 oily matter, itself unendowed with life or sensibility, contained in 

 cells, as honey is within the honey-comb, which are vital, and so 

 endowed that they have the power either of adding to or taking from 

 the quantity of oily matter at any time existing. The use of fat is to 

 fill up crevices in the body, facilitate the movements of parts one 

 upon another, and serve as a sort of internal nutriment, in case 

 the animal should be in a situation where he cannot obtain food : 

 but, when it accumulates, instead of facilitating the motions of 

 parts, it clogs and impedes them, and becomes, from its collected 

 amount of weight, a burthen to the body. A fat horse is not only 

 unfit to go, but really has a weight within himself to carry which 

 the horse in condition for work has been disencumbered of. A 

 fat horse will not bear the loss of blood the same as a horse in a 

 working state of body; the one will faint from the abstraction 

 of a quantity which the other will stand without being affected. 

 Plumpness, which arises from fatness, is too apt to convey to the 

 eye of the inexperienced the impression of strength and ability to 

 go to work ; whereas it ought, I repeat, be taken as a proof to the 

 contrary. When a purchaser enters a dealer's yard to buy a horse, 

 every horse shewn him, most likely, — certainly every horse four 

 or five years old, — is fat, and therefore not in a condition for work. 

 Dealers, by quantities of manger-meat, bruised oats, hay-chaff, 

 &c., and by giving their horses only such little walking exercise 

 as serves to keep their legs from filling, make the horses they have 

 for sale as fat as they can, and for two reasons : — 1st. Fat fills up 

 the crevices, and conceals any imperfections there may be of 

 outward form : it is the horse-dealer's putty ; by it, like the 

 coach-maker, he makes his article for sale appear more perfect, 

 or freer from defects, than it really is. — 2dly. By it he gives an 

 appearance of size and bulk to the articles, which passes for signs 

 of strength and ability, but which, as I said before, is in reality an 

 indication of weakness. No men are better aware of the disadvan- 

 tages arising from the presence of fat than trainers and jockeys. 

 " Such a horse is too fat to win his race," is a remark not seldom 

 heard, even at the starting-post on the race-course ; when all signs 

 of obesity, it is expected, have — or most assuredly ought to have 



