SYMMETRY. 267 



Symmetry is the conformance, as regards size, shape 

 and arrangement, of the various parts of the body to some 

 particular type of useful horse. 



In violation of this condition, we may have united in 

 the same animal, the long legs and light body of the race- 

 horse, and the heavy head, loaded neck, and thick shoulders 

 of the cart-horse ; or the contours of the race-horse, with the 

 exception of the loins being weak, and the hind legs short 

 with drooping croup. Even with the ordinary saddle-nag, 

 to say nothing of the hunter and officer's charger, we have 

 too frequently the massive shoulders of the draught-horse. 

 A coarse, heavy head, which reveals but too plainly a cart- 

 strain, is a terrible eyesore to an animal whose neck and 

 shoulders are light, and which might otherwise figure as a 

 high-class hack. 



We may see short-legged, deep-bodied cart-horses, with 

 great power of limbs and shoulders, having weak loins. I may 

 also mention that a horse which has oblique shoulders should 

 also have sloping pasterns and a horizontal croup. We must 

 here remember that the effect of "work " is often to render 

 the pasterns abnormally upright. We may witness many 

 instances of want of symmetry in the "tying-in" of the legs 

 under the knees, short pasterns, and large, flat feet of long 

 and slender-limbed horses. I need hardly say that a mean 

 carriage of the tail will contrast most unfavourably with a 

 showy and graceful bearing of the head and neck. 



The generic term "weed" is applied, usually, to long- 

 legged animals which are w^eak in the loins, and are light in 

 the back ribs. As a rule, the cause of their comparative 

 worthlessness is wrongly attributed to the length of their 

 limbs, rather than to their defects of loin and rib. If we com- 



