346 
LECTURES ON HORSES. 
steppers ; they drop and suddenly fall down upon their knees, and, 
I believe, from weakness in those joints. Neither does it follow 
that horses that go near the ground, daisy-cutters as they are 
often called, are of necessity unsafe walkers — many instances occur 
proving the contrary*. The lift of the foot, in good walking, should 
be sufficient to clear all ordinary obstacles in the road, and the 
action should be collected within the sphere of the animal’s perfect 
control, and not sprawling ; and the foot should be flexed in the 
air without any great deviation laterally out of the line of direction, 
forward and backward, turning the toes either much out, or much 
in ; though the latter is less objectionable than the former, being 
both faulty in action. And a horse that flexes his foot well in the 
lift, exhibits his shoe during the eversion of the foot, and that has 
a nimble though short step, though he may not make more ground 
or even so much as a horse with straight action, will be a much 
pleasanter hackney : in fact, this is the action that has already been 
described as, par excellence , the hackney action. 
The grounding of the foot should be flat and firm. To the 
eye of the observer there is the slightest perceptible difference 
between the toe and heels coming to the ground, in favour of the 
former ; a difference that need not disturb the horseman’s good old 
rule, that a horse in his walk should place his foot fairly and 
flatly down . Alighting upon the toe, as some horses with high 
and round action are apt to do, renders the step instable until the 
heel comes to the ground ; or, should the superincumbent weight 
preponderate forwards, then knuckling over is the result, and an 
awful drop, or else a fall, the consequence. Horses that go upon 
their toes have, for the most part, strong upright feet, with con- 
cave soles ; whereas, such as have flat feet are more likely to go 
upon their heels, to save their weak crusts. We have an illustra- 
tion of this in the going of lame horses : such as are lame from 
contraction or navicular disease, feeling the pain or tenderness in 
their heels, will tread upon their toes ; and such as feel the pain in 
their toes or crusts, horses that have or have had fever in their 
feet, will do all they can to step upon their heels. It is curious to 
observe — and one way in which we may do so is by the wear of 
their shoes — how different the tread of horses is : at the same time, 
we must bear in mind that the wear of the shoe not only tells how 
the horse treads, but also, in some measure, the manner in which 
he takes his foot off the ground. 
The RATE OF walking in a horse is faster than in a man. 
Fair toe-and-heel walking at the rate of four miles an hour, in a 
man, is accounted a good pace : a horse we reckon ought — to do 
* One will be found mentioned in a preceding lecture. 
