120 FORM AND ACTION. 



LECTURE X. 



THE ACT OF STANDING. 



It might appear that the quadruped, with his four legs as props 

 of support, was sustained mechanically in the standing posture, after 

 the manner of a four-legged stool or form ; and, nicely poised as 

 his body is between them, and advantageously placed as the legs 

 evidently are for its support, at first sight the animal structure is 

 not unlikely to impart a notion of the kind. As anatomists, how- 

 ever, we know that the limbs, from the circumstance of their being 

 made with joints in them would, were they not themselves sus- 

 tained by some superadded power, bend and give way under the 

 superincumbent weight, and let the body down; we know also 

 that the faculty they possess of supporting the body is essentially 

 a vital one, the dead animal losing the property of standing. It is 

 from the operation of the living muscles on the bones that the 

 animal derives the power of standing, as well as of moving ; 

 therefore it is that, when we speak of " the act of standing," we 

 are correctly expressing ourselves, it being in a physiological point 

 of view as much an act as walking, or trotting, or galloping is. 

 Each limb is kept in a state of extension underneath the body by 

 muscles, either themselves constituting part of it, or running from 

 the body to be inserted into it ; and though their actions or con- 

 tractions come greatly short of what would be required for pro- 

 ducing motion, still there can be no entire cessation of them without 

 the animal falling. Some horses take their rest standing — never 

 lie down. In these the muscles sustaining the limbs must be in 

 continual action ; and on this account it seems to me that such 

 horses can never profoundly sleep, for if they did they would fall, 

 the same as we see horses with lethargic affections occasionally 

 doing. I have seen lethargic horses repeatedly fall from sleeping 

 standing, even while they have been in harness. From which it 

 would appear that a degree of consciousness is required even to 

 sustain the standing posture ; and, therefore, it is, I repeat, that it 

 seems to me that horses who never lie down, although they may, 

 and apparently do, sufficiently take their rest, yet never can sleep 

 soundly or perfectly. 



