130 COMPARATIVE SHAPE OF HORSES. 



heavy draught ; and to what extent may such difference, if 

 any, amount to ? It is evident that the longer the hind leg, 

 the greater— other things being equal— will be the speed of 

 propulsion. Excess of height at the croup will, however, 

 be accompanied by three serious drawbacks: (i) by putting 

 increased work, during fast paces, on the fore limb (p. 51) 

 and on the muscles of the back and loins (p. 52) in raising 

 the fore hand at each stride, it will diminish the animal's 

 staying power ; (2) by surcharging the fore legs (p. 40), it 

 will naturally tend to render these limbs more liable to the 

 injurious effects of work than they would be, were the weight 

 more equally distributed between the fore and hind extre- 

 mities ; and (3) by overloading the fore hand, it will militate 

 against the cross-country horse rising easily at his fences and 

 getting away safely from them on landing. Those speedy 

 animals, the cheetah, the Indian black buck, and the grey- 

 hound, are a little longer in the hind limb than they are in 

 front. As a rule, race-horses of the highest class are about 

 the same height at withers and croup. This difference 

 between the racer and the other gallopers may be accounted 

 for by the fact, that the proportion of weight which the fore 

 limbs of the race-horse have to carry, is still more increased 

 by the presence of a jockey on his back. Among the fleet of 

 foot, I purposely omitted mentioning the hare, whose fine 

 speed can be maintained, as we might have inferred, only for 

 a short distance on level ground; though it is particularly 

 hard to catch up a hill, the diifficulty of ascending which is 

 directly lessened by the fact of the fore limbs being shorter 

 than the hind ones. Any disadvantage, in progression, 

 arising from undue shortness of fore legs is, more or less, 

 compensated for, in the hare, by great development of the 

 muscles of the loins (*' rearing muscles," p. 52). The lynx 

 (Fig. 4), which is very high behind, has an extraordinary turn 

 of speed ; but only for a short distance. Its gallop, like that 

 of other cats, is a series of leaps (p. 106). From practical 

 observations, I do not think that it is an advantage for a 

 race-horse to be higher over the croup than at the withers. 



