52 FORM AND ACTION. 



shoulders ; and which is now, by all purchasers of young horses 

 conversant in such matters, received as a general law of Nature, 

 to which exceptions are comparatively rare. In my next lecture I 

 hope to be able to shew, in a statistical manner, to what extent, and 

 at what age, such growth may be expected to take place : in the 

 mean time I would observe, in reference to it, that it appears to 

 consist mainly or entirely in a shooting-up of the spinous pro- 

 cesses of the vertebrae. We see the colt with thick clumsy 

 shoulders in consequence of his scapula? reaching as high as the 

 tops of his spinous processes : we examine him grown to a horse, 

 and find him with finely-formed shoulders — with scapulae no higher 

 than they qught to be, and with withers admirably raised ; and, 

 withal, we discover on admeasurement that he has actually risen 

 one or two inches in the withers after, to a common observer, he 

 might have been supposed to have attained his perfect growth. 



LECTURE V. 



THE SHOULDER (continued). 



ALL "judges of horses" concur in the necessity, for the purposes 

 of riding, for depth and obliquity of shoulder : if there be any dis- 

 crepancy in opinion among such persons, it consists in one prefer- 

 ring a strong, another a fine shoulder. Even this, however, can 

 hardly be said to amount to any division of judgment ; for the thin 

 shoulder will not, with "true judges," gain admiration unless it 

 possess depth and strength ; nor will the thick one be altogether 

 approved unless it rise at the withers ; in a word, we shall find 

 what is considered by judges on both sides to constitute perfection 

 of shoulder, to reside in a happy combination of depth and obli- 

 quity with strength and fineness; and if we desire any confirmation 

 of this, we have only to make our observations on horses known to 

 ride and go as horses ought to perform — on celebrated hunters, 

 horses in Leicestershire and in all our capital studs, who in form 

 are, nowadays, bred as near to perfection as, probably, it is possible 

 for art to attain. I say " bred," because perfection of shoulder, like 

 all animal formation, has manifestly been greatly promoted by at- 

 tention to breeding. 



