104 FORM AND ACTION. 



had a back roached rather towards the loins, but straight quarters, 

 and, as we shall find, also lengthy quarters. 



What we have to admire, as much, perhaps, as any points in 

 Eclipse, is the length and breadth of his arms and thighs : he being, 

 in the fullest sense of the words, a large-limbed horse. His arm 

 measured, across, from the front to the point of the elbow, the sur- 

 prising breadth of ten inches, and was longer by two inches than, 

 according to the length of the entire limb, it is in horses in general ; 

 the measurement, by the scale, being equal between the elbow and 

 bend of the knee, and the latter and the ground : immediately above 

 the knee the arm measured five inches across, shewing that it pre- 

 served its great breadth all the way down. 



For the relative lengths of the different parts of the fore limb, 

 we must content ourselves with St. Bel's measurements of the 

 bones. The radius was sixteen inches long, the cannon-bone 

 twelve inches; the pastern, coronet, and coffin-bones, together, 

 seven inches in length : from all which it seems, according to the 

 measurement of other horses, we may infer that Eclipse had, with 

 his long and broad arms, short cannons, and by no means lengthy 

 pasterns. 



There must have existed considerable harmony of proportion, 

 and consequently beauty of form, in Eclipse's hind quarters. A 

 line extended from the summit of his rump proved the measure of 

 another passing from the root of the tail to the stifle, to a second 

 drawn between the latter point and the hock, and to a third from 

 the hock to the toe of the hoof. The breadth of the thigh, " taken 

 below the fold of the buttock," was great, ten inches ; the same as 

 the arm across at the elbow. Likewise there was great extension 

 between the point of the hock and the bend of the ham, the 

 measure being eight inches ; shewing Eclipse must have been the 

 possessor of extraordinarily broad or good hocks, a point of the very 

 first importance in a racer. The cannons and pasterns measured, 

 as is always the case, longer in the hind than in the fore limbs. 



Eclipse's limbs were not only large, but long : he must have been 

 what is called a " long-legged" horse ; for St. Bel tells us, he 

 measured forty-one inches from his elbow to the ground ; leaving 

 but twenty-five inches — his height being sixty-six — in a per- 

 pendicular line to the top of the withers ; and as the general rule 



