ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OP THE HORSe’s FOOT. 535 
which looks as if covered with a crimson gossamer web or a 
tangled thicket of coral- coloured vegetation. 
The other chief division of the plantar artery is also im- 
bedded in the lateral groove of the pedal bone, but its sub- 
divisions chiefly go to make up extensive capillary commu- 
nications on its anterior face, and branches to the heels, and 
finally return to the interior of the bone to join the arrange- 
ment of vessels in the semilunar sinus. 
We will recur to this complex but beautiful arrangement 
when we have glanced at the veins of the foot, in order to 
show the intention and the value of such a widely-extended 
disposition. 
Veins . — The general arrangement of the veins of the 
horse's foot, springing as they do from the terminations of 
the arteries, or rather from those exceedingly fine tubes in- 
termediate between the veins and arteries called the “ capil- 
laries," is not unlike the disposition of the vessels we have just 
been describing as carrying blood to that organ. Serving as 
channels for the removal of the vital fluid after it has served 
its purpose and become deteriorated, the veins present perhaps 
a still more curious and interesting appearance, from their 
superficial arrangement being somewhat different to that of 
the arteries. They seem to be more interwoven with each 
other than the arborisations of the latter, to be more numerous 
and comparatively larger, and the superficial have but little 
communication with the deeper seated veins. When they have 
been distended after death by the injection of some warm fluid 
substance that solidifies on cooling, then removed en masse 
by prolonged maceration and dried, the whole external venous 
system looks not unlike a fine but close net moulded to the 
shape of the foot. This is more especially apparent on the 
sole, where their diameter is very regular,, and where they are 
woven into the substance of the fibrous tissue which covers the 
bone, and which differs from the ordinary covering noticed 
elsewhere. 
But though more numerous, of larger calibre, and more 
isolated — the superficial from the deep-seated — than the ar- 
teries, they generally follow these in their course as their 
satellites ; and hence we have a large and slightly undulating 
vein accompanying the circumflex artery around the convex 
border of the pedal bone. The solar veins, or veins of the 
sole, then, empty themselves chiefly into this vein, which may 
aptly be termed the “ circumflex," and from it many trunks 
jet upwards towards the face of the bone, to give rise to a 
most notable network of vessels so closely and so evenly dis- 
posed in some situations as to leave scarcely any interspaces, 
