26 DISORDERS OF ILL-FORMATION. [BOOK I. 



full stretch of their physical powers, straining to 

 the utmost the immediate coverings of the bones, 

 something or other is going to wreck — of muscle 

 or tendon, of ligament or sinew. Sooner or later, 

 the effect of so much excessive fatigue of the defor- 

 mity runs along the solids, and reaching the vitals 

 occasions constitutional disease, or leaves behind it 

 an incurable malady, mostly descending to the feet, 

 and to the fore ones in particular. Equally true is 

 it, that we frequently find out new properties, or 

 hidden powers in a horse, which had never hitherto 

 been known to his owners ; but, then, as I shall par- 

 ticularise by and by, no such latent powers were 

 ever discovered in any horse, without his possessing 

 certain just proportions of the bones taken alto- 

 gether *. What these proportions are, as well as 

 what they are not, I come presently to lay down ; 

 the integuments (or coverings) ever adapting them- 

 selves thereto, in one case produce what is called 

 symmetry ; but, if the limb be disproportioned, the 

 coverings adapt themselves to that particular de- 

 fect, and enlarged muscle at these particular places 

 becomes visible to the commonest observer. 



The acquiring a ready mode of discovering when 

 a horse of the one or the other formation is pre- 



* Eclipse, a horse whose very name is synonymous for speed, had 

 none of the proportions generally deemed indispensable to great 

 speed ; and he was cast, by the Duke of Cumberland, for his apparent 

 deformities, when a colt ; but his defects in one particular were amply 

 supplied by excesses in another, and, taken altogether, composed the 

 very best bit of bone, blood, and muscle ever produced. 



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