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CHAPTER XXIV. 



BLOOD, SYMMETRY, AND COMPENSATIONS. 



Blood. — The relation of "blood" to conformation is its 

 only one which need be considered here 



The term " blood " usually signifies more or less pure descent 

 from animals mentioned in the English Stud Book, or from 

 high-caste Arabs. In our Colonies, the initials T. B. have a 

 more elastic application than in the Mother-country. English 

 thoroughbred horses having been bred almost entirely with 

 the object of their utilisation on the Turf; their conformation 

 more or less resembles that of the galloper. Were I to be 

 asked to particularise the "point" or "points" most charac- 

 teristic of the English "blood" horse, I would answer: 

 " The legs below the knees and hocks." Their special 

 peculiarities, in this respect, are : lightness of bone, thin- 

 ness of skin, fineness and shortness of hair, small amount 

 of underlying connective tissue, near approach to parallelism 

 of back tendons to cannon-bones, with consequent smallness 

 of fetlock joints {see p. 218), good length of pasterns, and 

 small hoofs with well-arched soles. These hard-looking, 

 though light-shaped legs, are evidently an inheritance from 

 the East ; for although we rarely, if ever, see them in pure 

 Western stock, we may find them in profusion among Arab, 

 Barb, Persian, East Indian, and South African horses, all of 



