246 SKIN, HAIR, AND COLOUR. 



indicate that the skin is in active working order, and conse- 

 quently in good condition for removing the surplus heat 

 generated in the body by hard labour. The Desert Arabs, 

 who have no objection to a thick mane, consider that unless 

 a horse has a thin tail, he cannot be of high caste. The 

 same idea seems to have given rise to the saying that one 

 never sees a bad rat-tailed horse. As remarked by 

 " Stonehenge," waviness in the hair of the tail is a sign of 

 want of breeding. 



Hair on the Legs of Cart-horses. — It is a common 

 belief that cart-horses with a good supply of hair on the legs 

 have better bone than the cleaner limbed animals. Mr. 

 G. M. Sexton, secretary to the English Cart-horse Society, 

 in his essay on cart-horses, writes as follows : " One of the 

 characteristics of the Shire horse is to have hair on the legs. 

 The hair should be long and thin, finer in quality on the 

 mare than the stallion ; it should grow from the fetlock above 

 the knee, and the same behind the hock. By many this is 

 thought to be a useless appendage, and that this abundance 

 of hair is a cause of grease ; but it is not so by any means. 

 Hair is an indication of bone and size." Mr. Frederick 

 Street, in his History of the Shire Horse, gives " plenty of 

 long silky hair on the legs " as one of the desirable points in 

 the Shire horse. Mr. James Howard, M. P., in his N'otcs on Cart- 

 horses (Royal Agricultural Journal, 1884), remarks that : "A 

 grave doubt, however, arises whether the profusion of hair 

 and ' feather ' insisted upon in show-yards and among the 

 leading breeders of Shire horses is really so essential to 

 strength and constitution as is generally asserted and 

 believed. As a farmer of heavy clay land — much of it 



