HAIR ON THE LEGS OF CART-HORSES. 247 



hilly — which requires very powerful horses in tillage and in 

 carting, I have long entertained doubts as to the policy of the 

 present tendency to such a profusion of hair. Breeders not 

 only contend for hair on the rear of the legs, but many have 

 also come to insist upon a mass of hair in front from the knee 

 downward, doubtless a characteristic of many of the old 

 Shire horses bred in Derbyshire early in the present century. 

 Of course, no one contends that all this hairy covering is 

 desirable in itself; it is advocated as beinof essential to 

 hardiness of constitution and size of bone. This contention 

 merely means that the desired constitution and sufficient bone 

 have not hitherto been obtained without an abundance of 

 hair." This gentleman cites cases in which, for railway 

 work, clean-legged horses are preferred to those with a 

 plentiful supply of hair, on account of the latter being pre- 

 disposed to grease and other forms of inflammation of the 

 skin of these parts. We may readily see that legs which 

 have a large amount of coarse hair on them would be 

 pre-disposed to grease and other allied ailments ; for, as both 

 hair and scurf skin are secreted by the true skin, we [may 

 infer that if the former is thick and coarse, the latter will 

 be strong and harsh, and, consequently, the oil which is 

 secreted to keep the surface soft and supple, will not be able 

 to perform its duty as efficiently as it would do, were the 

 scurf skin thin. When the scurf skin eets hard and cracks 

 from the effects of the climate and from its being insufficiently 

 supplied by this oil, the highly sensitive true skin becomes 

 inflamed from irritation due to exposure. The fact of cart- 

 horses being peculiarly liable to " sallenders," if they are 

 blistered for "bog spavins," taken in connection with the 

 coarseness of their hair, as compared to that of lighter 



