88 EXAMINATION OF HORSES 
this focus or centre of weight; indeed it helps to form. 
part of it, and but for the oblique direction of the 
phalanx would certainly have transmitted through it a 
portion of the rays in their most intense form. This 
obliquity of the phalanx saves it in every position save 
one, and that is when the foot is planted on the ground 
far under the body as in sleep. In some paces, such as 
the walk and trot, the foot occupies at every pace almost, 
but not quite, the same relation to the body. It is in 
sleep only that the body is thrown over the fore feet to 
such an extent that the posterior rays of weight pass 
through the navicular bone. If you take a perfectly 
fresh section of the fore leg and foot from the knee, 
plant the foot surface on the ground, and place your 
whole weight on the knee of the section and bend it 
forward, you tighten up the navicular bone by the per- 
forans tendon as though it were held in a vice; then 
notice the direction of the long axis of the phalanx, and 
you find that it still does not pass through the navicular 
joint ; but you are not to suppose that with the weight of 
your body the direction of the axis is directed backward 
to the same extent as it is with the weight of the horse's 
body. But above all, you are not to lose sight of the 
fact that the centre or focus of the rays of weight is the 
whole of the lower articular surface of the coronary bone. 
When therefore the line of the axis of weight passes 
immediately in front of but not through the navicular joint, 
this joint is in the very blaze of the focus of weight, 
besides acting as the maznstay of the coffin joint. The 
