148 FORM AND ACTION. 



royal stud furnishes : the Queen's (not the state) carriage-horses — 

 horses standing from sixteen to eighteen hands in height — whose 

 grandeur or beauty of action is exceeded only by the awful rate at 

 which they get over their ground. Our late sovereign, George 

 the Fourth, was celebrated for his noble coach-horses : their trot 

 in the royal carriages was of the finest description, and he brought 

 his teams to the highest possible degree of perfection by casting 

 (for sale) every horse who was not able to keep pace with his 

 more fortunate competitors. Of a trotting hackney a better epitome 

 can hardly be given than that contained in the distich of the old 

 song — 



" He was such a one to bend his knees, 

 And tuck his haunches in*;" 



the " tucking of the haunches in," as I remarked before, having 

 a mighty deal to do with the pace. " The horse that points out 

 his fore legs, and goes with his knee straight, is no trotter," says 

 John Lawrence t ; " he loses time by over-striding." 



So far as we are able, from general observation, to say what is 

 the fittest form or structure for a trotting horse, we may set it 

 down as a rule having but few exceptions, that shortness of the 

 shafts of the cylindrical bones of the limbs, and uprightness in the 

 joints, are more conducive to the performance of this action than 

 length and obliquity. Few race -horses can trot well, owing to 

 the lengthiness of their limbs and springiness of their joints; and 

 as for cart-bred horses, though they possess the requisite shortness 

 of make, their comparatively broad and lax structure is, as I said 

 before, calculated rather for strength than speed. In general, 

 horses celebrated for feats of trotting are by no means pleasant 

 hackneys : when put out at their speed, they use their limbs with 

 that quickness that does not allow time for the operation of suffi- 

 cient elasticity to amount to spring, and with that force which 

 greatly tends to destroy elasticity ; the consequence is, that many 

 of our most famous trotters are what riding connoisseurs call 

 " bone setters." 



* I know not if I quote correctly. In truth, I have almost lost sight of 

 the famous old ballad. 



j" Treatise on llorsea, &c. 1810. 



