58 EXAMINATION OF HORSES 
LECTURE VIII. 
SHOWING HOW HEELS BECOME HIGH AND CONTRACTED. 
GENTLEMEN,—We now come to consider anomalies of 
shape, and we cannot do better than spend our hour 
to-day by going carefully over the functions of the foot, 
and, by rigid adherence to strict logical method, investi-: 
gate the causes of high “ boxy” and contracted heels. 
If you examine a healthy fore and hind foot of a five- 
year-old horse, you will find that they are both inclined’ 
to be oval; and all ovals, as you are aware, have a long 
and a short axis. The long axis of the healthy fore foot 
is from s7de fo s¢de, but in the hind foot it is from defore 
backwards. This long axis has a strong tendency to alter 
its position in the fore foot, and to become like that of 
the hind foot—from before backwards 3 but the long 
axis of the hind foot. has no tendency to alter. 
Again, I have before told you that the “ze of the 
coronary band in the fore foot has a tendency to become’ 
horizontal. 
A foot having undergone these two revolutions is known 
as a ‘long contracted foot with high boxy heels,” or, as 
‘some have it, a mudley foot. 
These two alterations of shape occur in the same 
