BREAST. 197 



forward. With horses which have thick withers it is also 

 difficult to keep the saddle in its place ; for the presence 

 of large shoulder muscles and abundance of connective tissue 

 conceals the outline of the shoulder blades and renders the 

 part, upon which the points of the tree rest, smooth and 

 round. 



" Age and sex have an equal influence on the leanness of 

 withers, which, badly defined in the colt, come well out only 

 towards five or six years old, at the time when the bones have 

 attained their full length, and the body its definite size. The 

 withers are less high in the mare than in the gelding or 

 entire. As a set off, the last mentioned, whose forehand 

 acquires a considerable development, has this part thicker, 

 especially in the case of a heavy draught animal" {Goiibatix 

 and Barrier). 



Breast. — Width of breast, or width of chest, as the 

 distance between the fore legs is usually called, " is generally 

 looked upon as a measure of the size of the chest, or, rather, 

 of its rotundity. This is an error which we have cleared 

 away by more than fifty observations made on the living 

 animal, and afterwards completed on the dead subject. We 

 have never been able to ascertain, with respect to this point, 

 any practical difference among animals of the same height, 

 whatever might have been their width of breast ; for the 

 simple reason that it is not in its front part that the chest 

 varies much, but rather in its middle and back portions. To 

 what cause, then, other than bulging out of the anterior ribs, 

 is width between the fore leo^s due ? We must attribute it to 

 the greater or less thickness of the pectoral muscles which 

 form its base. We may see the truth of this from the fact 



