72 FORM AND ACTION. 



below the cloven foot, the solipede or solid hoof; each losing some- 

 thing which renders it less useful as a hand, but gaining something 

 which better adapts it for a foot, until all regard to the former is 

 lost, and the latter remains paramount and exclusive. The cloven 

 foot of the ruminant still maintains some clutch or hold upon the 

 ground, but the undivided hoof of the horse is deprived of all this : 

 that, in its shod condition, cannot be said to take any further hold 

 upon the earth than what is mechanically derived from the pres- 

 sure caused by the superincumbent force or weight, from the un- 

 evenness of the surface of the foot, from impress of it upon yield- 

 ing ground. In the same manner that the cannon bone of the 

 horse can be demonstrated to consist of an union of two metacarpal 

 bones, so the pastern bones may be said, each of them, to be con- 

 stituted of two united phalanges, and the coffin of a junction of the 

 two separate or semi-coffin bones of the cloven foot. 



The lower end of the cannon-bone has two roller-like, smooth, 

 and polished surfaces, which play within correspondent concavities 

 upon the summit of the pastern bone : the position of the latter, 

 however, being obliquely forward, while the former stands in a 

 perpendicular line, a large vacuity would necessarily be left be- 

 hind, were not the sesamoid bones placed there for the purpose of 

 completing the joint. These two little supplementary bones are 

 kept in their places by ligaments, two running crosswise, attaching 

 them to the pastern bone ; but their mainstay, that which princi- 

 pally upholds them, and admits of the play or motion of them dur- 

 ing the action of the fetlock joint, is the suspensory ligament. The 

 sesamoid bones are so bound to the supero -posterior part of the 

 pastern, that the three together form a cylindroid dish-like hollow, 

 into which is received the lower end of the cannon-bone ; and the 

 weight from the latter preponderates upon one or other of the for- 

 mer, depending upon the obliquity or line of direction the pastern 

 takes on leaving the cannon in its course to the foot. When the 

 pastern deviates but little from the perpendicular of the limb, it is said 

 to be " straight," and is almost always made " short ;" so that short 

 and straight pasterns are consentaneous formations : the reverse, 

 short and slanting pasterns, being incompatibles, or at least such a 

 combination as is rarely seen, and is attended with disadvantages 

 both of strength and action. When, on the other hand, the pas- 



