10 ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OP THE HORSE’S FOOT. 
of strength, courage, speed, fidelity, and obedience, found 
concentrated in him; and though his great value depends 
upon a just disposition of these, yet more especially is it as a 
living machine , capable of producing motion and communi- 
cating it to inert masses at all times and in all situations 
that he is most to be prized. This quality has rendered him 
a most potent agent in advancing civilisation, and changing 
the aspect and destinies of communities and races, morally and 
physically ; to no other creature, perhaps, beneath the dignity 
of man is the world so much indebted for its progress 
towards a higher and more beneficent civilisation. And 
even now, with all our wonderful mechanical appliances, 
and our almost limitless mechanical genius, our every-day 
life would be sadly marred in its course, or shorn of much 
of its utility and pleasure, if deprived of the services to 
be obtained from this slave. And it is scarcely necessary 
to remark that this effective utilisation of the horse is 
mainly due to the character of its foot, which is so con- 
structed as to make it to meet demands that could not be 
imposed upon any other animal ; while the horny box 
enveloping it, by its being a very slow conductor of heat, 
protects it from the extremes of temperature in Northern* 
as well as in Southern regions. 
Seeing, then, the important relation the foot bears to the 
efficiency of the horse, we cannot be surprised that this 
organ should have had a large share of attention devoted to 
it from the earliest times to the present. Indeed, 
nearly every one of the ancient writers who treated of the 
horse centre their inquiry on the quality of its feet ; and no 
matter how beautifully formed the other regions might 
happen to be, if these were faulty, all was bad. Xenophon, 
the Greek general and horseman, some 2270 years ago 
writes : “ In respect to the horse’s body, then, we assert that 
he must first examine the feet , for as there would be no use 
in a house, though the upper parts were extremely beautiful, 
if the foundations were not laid as they ought to be, so there 
would be no profit in a war-horse, even if he had all his 
f We are all aware that horses can be successfully utilised, so far as 
their feet are concerned, in the hottest regions of the globe ; but whether 
they can be so employed in the very coldest Wrangell leads us to doubt. 
Travelling in the far north of Siberia, he writes : — cc The poor horses suffer 
at least as much as their riders, for, besides the general effect of the cold, 
they are tormented by ice forming in their nostrils and stopping their 
breathing ; when they intimate this by a distressed snort and a convulsive 
shaking of the head, the drivers relieve them by taking out the pieces of ice 
to save them from being suffocated. When the icy ground is not covered 
by snow, their hoofs often hurst from, the effects of the cold” — ‘ Narrative of 
an Expedition to the Polar Sea in 1820-23,’ p. 366. 
