NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
437 
Long Tails for Horses. — T once measured the tail of a 
hearse horse, which I observed when attending a funeral 
It was no less than six feet in length. I presume the fashion 
of driving long-tailed horses has been handed down from 
the olden times, perhaps from the days of Queen Anne, 
when all the swell carriage-horses wore long tails. There is 
a legend that people at Oxford who let out grazing fields 
for horses in the long vacation charge more for a long-tailed 
horse than for a short-tailed one, because the long-tailed ones 
eat more than the others, which are obliged to waste much time 
in driving off the flies, while the long-tailed horses keep off' the 
flies with their tails and eat continuously. I cannot help 
expressing a wish that some of our aristocratic carriage- owners 
would set the example of not continuing to disfigure their horses 
by cutting their tails. In addition to a moderately long tail 
being a great ornament to a horse, it is also of great use to the 
animal, by enabling him to brush off flies, especially if at any 
time he should happen to be turned out into a field, or if he is 
in a stable in the country, where flies are more numerous and 
troublesome than in London. I believe that the custom of cut- 
ting short the tails of horses has been adopted merely because, 
if they were longer, the grooms would have a little more trouble 
in combing and washing them. I do not know of any good reason 
why the tails of saddle-horses should not be also allowed to 
grow longer than they usually are in the present day. 
Intelligence of Horses Dependent on the Size of the 
Brain. — A man that trains canary birds and exhibits a perform- 
ing hare in the streets, tells me that he alw^ays selected a hare 
for a pupil which had a large head ; all hares were not equally 
capable of instruction. When in the 2nd Life Guards, I used 
often to watch the officers' horses and the troopers, to see if the 
horses which had broad foreheads knew their drill better than 
the small fronted horses, and 1 fancy that the larger brained 
horses were the more clever of the two. At a dinner party at 
Aldermaston Park, I met a gentleman who has many hunters, 
and I asked him kindly to measure his horses' foreheads, taking 
the upper measurement between the temporal fossae, and the 
lower between the orbits of the eye ; the following is his answer. 
" I have measured four of my horses' heads in the places you 
wished : — 
Temporal fossaj. Orbits of ej'e. 
1. Beauty (an intelligent marf;) ....measures 5^m 8^in. 
2. Rocket (a fearful puller) ...5 8 
3. Hawkeye (a big fool) ... 4| 8 
4. Bella Donna (a calm quiet animal) 5 8 
