JUDGING HORSES IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 3 
CLASSROOM DISCUSSION. 
The horse as a machine. — All farm animals may be considered as 
machines which have definite work to do. We may look upon the 
horse as a mechanism which converts raw material in the form of 
forage and grain into work. In other words, the latent energy in 
the food is made to do work by means of the living mechanism we 
call a horse. A machine has value according to its efficiency in doing- 
work. Before we can estimate the efficiency of this particular 
Fig. 1. — A good draft horse. 
machine we must knoAv something about its structure in relation to 
the work it has to do. 
Anatomy as a oasis for study. — We may consider the horse as a 
mechanism in which latent energy in food is made active in muscles 
which work upon bones as levers, the operation being stimulated and 
controlled by the nervous system. It may be necessary to review at 
this time the fundamentals of physiology which have to do with the 
use of food. Charts showing the skeleton of a horse and the relation 
of muscles to bones will prove almost indispensable in giving a clear 
