LECTURES ON HORSES. 
By William Percivall, M.R.C.S., Veterinary Surgeon 
First Life Guards. 
THE HIND LEGS. 
THE three bones below the pastern, properly speaking, belong 
to the foot ; a part I shall defer the consideration of until we have 
completed the present series of lectures “ on Form and Action 
in accordance with this plan I now proceed to the hind ex- 
tremities. 
In my description of the fore limbs, I observed that they dif- 
fered materially from the hind ones in their superstructural divi- 
sions, notwithstanding that below the knees and hocks there 
existed, both in the living and dissected subjects, every identity 
between their structures: the osseous fabric of the fore limb 
exhibits, as a whole, a tolerably fair representation of the limb of 
the living animal ; but than the haunches of the living horse and 
the parts representative thereof in the skeleton nothing can be 
more unlike. The framework of bones composing the hind quar- 
ters* exhibits a bold, rugged, zigzag structure, remarkable only 
for its irregularities, having here a huge projection, there a large 
void, with such a disposition of the component pieces as to offer 
every advantage, consistent with the general conformation, to the 
muscles that once filled the vacuities, and had their attachments 
to projections so oddly, yet wisely, shapen and disposed. The 
hind limbs are the agents of progression : though the fore contri- 
bute to the operation, they are no more than auxiliary forces, not 
* “ Hind quarters,” and “ quarters” are expressions used here and in other 
places in the sense of buttocks. 
VOL. XVI. 
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