94 FORM AND ACTION. 



be good of their kind, and therefore are not to be condemned. The 

 os calcis may be lengthy and prominent upward, and the lateral 

 projections may stand well and clearly out from the sides, and the 

 hock, though straight, may, as I said before, still be considered 

 good. 



Hocks, I must repeat once more before I conclude, are of that 

 importance in action that they deserve, in our examinations, to 

 command much attention from us. A horse may have very good 

 hocks, and yet be so shapen in other respects as to be worth very 

 little ; but hardly any thing can compensate for bad hocks, the 

 hock being in its operation that in progression which the oar is to 

 the boat. Without power therein no horse can go well and long : 

 he may possess action, but he cannot fail to prove deficient in 

 strength and endurance. 



The bones below the hock being the same in number and kind 

 as, and similar in structure to, those below the knee, and their rela- 

 tions and uses being alike, there will be no need here to add any- 

 thing to the descriptions already given of the cannon and splint, 

 and pastern and sesamoid bones ; and as every individual part of 

 the machine, the foot excepted, has now been described, I shall, 

 in the next lecture, take a review of the skeleton as an entire struc- 

 ture, entering more fully and practically than has been done before 

 into the consideration of it as a machine intended for purposes 

 of locomotion and the carriage of burthen. 



LECTURE VIII. 



THE PROPORTIONS OF THE HORSE. 



In the construction of animal bodies Nature appears to have had 

 two grand objects in view, utility and beauty. An all-skilful hand has 

 so made every " living thing," that, with an exterior calculated to 

 excite our admiration, interiorly it is furnished with every requi- 

 site for the performance of those functions for which it was created. 

 How beautifully is this illustrated throughout the animal creation ! 

 How beautifully is it further illustrated throughout individual ani- 

 mal mechanism ! Not an animal, not a part even of an animal, 

 but what is made and fashioned after a manner excellent in design, 

 inimitable in execution. In what the finite view of man regards as 



