CHAP. I.] EVILS OF BAD SHAPE AND MAKE. 27 



sented to our notice, forms the perfection of art in 

 passing judgment on a horse. 



2. But the horse's achievements, or " what he 

 can do" under certain circumstances of shape and 

 make, would ill employ our pen at the present 

 moment — valuable as the investigation must always 

 be in itself — were it not for the practical application 

 we mean to make of it shortly, by way of illustrating 

 the direct contrary, or defective shape and make, 

 as being the harbinger of several radical disorders 

 of his frame. Nor is this all : some are so evidently 

 ill-formed in the chest and carcase, from the mo- 

 ment they are foaled, that no art of ours is equal to 

 prevent the return of certain disorders which are 

 sure to attend a horse of that particular formation 

 all his life-time. As the one is known and inevit- 

 able, so the effects of the other may be foreseen, 

 a^id, in some degree alleviated, if so much trouble 

 and expense be not greater than the value of the 

 horse. This is all that can be doneybr such an 

 animal : and since the resources of art are not equal 

 to the obstacles of animated nature, so no man ought 

 unreasonably to expect, least of all, to force his 

 beast, to perform any species of labour or exercise, 

 for which nature or the accident of birth hath ren- 

 dered him any wise unfit; although it must be al- 

 lowed, as a general axiom, that it is only by push- 

 ing the animal to the extent of his powers, that we 

 can find out the most he is capable of performing at 

 any given work. In this way it was the fast-trotting 

 powers of the Phenomena mare (which was before 



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