96 FORM AND ACTION. 



race-horses, would be of great service ;" and also " by means of this 

 table, we should be enabled to establish the true conformation of the 

 race-horse, and at any given time to discover whether the breed 

 has improved or degenerated." That Eclipse was a race-horse of 

 the first distinction, both for speed and bottom, no one will dispute. 

 He won more and higher renown on the turf than any horse either 

 before or since his day ; and, therefore, St. Bel had a right to as- 

 sume that his proportions were, as near as could be obtained from 

 any one individual, such as a perfect race-horse should possess. 



By the " proportions" of an animal body is meant the dimen- 

 sions — the length, breadth, and thickness — of the various parts or 

 pieces of which it is composed, in the relation that one part bears 

 to the entire structure or to another part : for any individual part 

 may possess in itself very correct relative dimensions, and yet be, 

 as a component piece of an entire structure, out of proportion, or 

 not in symmetry with other parts. The eye accustomed to view 

 animals in regard to their make will in a moment detect any 

 flagrant disproportion in the constituent parts of a body ; and yet, 

 were the same person asked what the proportions of the faulty 

 piece in the structure ought to be, he could probably only answer 

 you by a reference to the body he had been finding fault with. 

 St. Bel, following a practice instituted by the great Bourgelat, the 

 founder of the veterinary schools in France, was prompted by his 

 example to carry these matters out of the mere pale of specu- 

 lation, and to institute in the British school what already existed in 

 the French, viz. a scale of perfect proportions whereto all horses 

 might be referred, and by which they might be geometrically com- 

 pared and computed. He had a right to view Eclipse, from his 

 achievements upon the turf, as a horse, take him altogether, as near 

 perfection as Nature in her strange and fanciful variety has made 

 the animal ; and he, therefore, adopted his admeasurements as those 

 of the proper proportions of a race-horse. And in order that these 

 proportions might be reduced to a scale, and so be made appli- 

 cable to horses of all sizes, St. Bel, still treading in the steps of 

 his great master, Bourgelat, first took the measure of the head of 

 Eclipse, and by that measurement computed, in regard to length, 

 all other parts of his body. Whether these chronicled proportions 

 prove of any practical use to us or not, they will always serve to 



