THE 
VETERINARIAN. 
VOL. XVI, No. 182.] FEBRUARY 1843. [New Series, No. 14. 
LECTURES ON HORSES. 
By William Percivall, M.R.C.S., Veterinary Surgeon 
First Life Guards. 
THE FETLOCK. 
FROM the cannon we descend to the pastern, the two parts 
being connected by the joint known by the name of the fetlock or 
feetlock ; so called from the lock or tuft of hair which grows 
from it. 
The cannon, pastern, and coffin bones of the solidungulous ani- 
mal bear evidence, in their formation, of that incorporation or con- 
solidation of parts which we observe to take place in the scale of 
analogous structures, at the top of which stands the most perfect 
of digital formations, the human hand, at the bottom, immediately 
below the cloven foot, the solipede or solid hoof; each losing some- 
thing which renders it less useful as a hand, but gaining something 
which better adapts it for a foot, until all regard to the former is 
lost, and the latter remains paramount and exclusive. The cloven 
foot of the ruminant still maintains some clutch or hold upon the 
ground, but the undivided hoof of the horse is deprived of all this : 
that, in its shod condition, cannot be said to take any further hold 
upon the earth than what is mechanically derived from the pres- 
sure caused by the superincumbent force or weight, from the un- 
evenness of the surface of the foot, from impress of it upon yield- 
ing ground. In the same manner that the cannon bone of the 
horse can be demonstrated to consist of an union of two metacarpal 
bones, so the pastern bones may be said, each of them, to be con- 
stituted of two united phalanges, and the coffin of a junction of the 
two separate or semi-coffin-bones of the cloven foot. 
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