LECTURES ON HORSES. 
423 
pieces of which it is composed, in the relation that one part bears 
to the entire structure or to another part : for any individual part 
may possess in itself very correct relative dimensions, and yet be, 
as a component piece of an entire structure, out of proportion, or 
not in symmetry with other parts. The eye accustomed to view 
animals in regard to their make will in a moment detect any 
flagrant disproportion in the constituent parts of a body ; and yet 
were tho same person asked what the proportions of the faulty 
piece in the structure ought to be, he could probably only answer 
you by a reference to the body he had been finding fault with. 
Sainbel, following a practice instituted by the great Bourgelat, the 
founder of the veterinary schools in France, was prompted by his 
example to carry these matters out of the mere pale of specu- 
lation and to institute in the British school what already existed in 
the French, viz. a scale of perfect proportions whereto all horses 
-might be referred, and by which they might be geometrically com- 
pared and computed. He had a right to view Eclipse, from his 
achievements upon the turf, as a horse, take him altogether, as near 
perfection as Nature in her strange and fanciful variety has made 
the animal ; and he, therefore, adopted his admeasurements as those 
of the proper proportions of a race-horse. And in order that these 
proportions might be reduced to a scale, and so be made appli- 
cable to horses of all sizes, Sainbel, still treading in the steps of 
his great master, Bourgelat, first took the measure of the head of 
Eclipse, and by that measurement computed, in regard to length, 
all other parts of his body. Whether these chronicled proportions 
prove of any practical use to us or not, they will always serve to 
represent what sort or stamp of a horse Eclipse was : a matter so 
difficult to determine with any exactness from any painting or 
print of him, knowing, as we do, that painters do not, in general, 
proceed in their works after any geometrical calculations. 
We learn from LECOQ* that the first idea of “ proportions” ap- 
pears in an Italian work published in the sixteenth century ; 
though to Bourgelat are we indebted for their establishment upon 
a rational basis. Following GRISONIE, Bourgelat assumed as his 
“ unity of mensuration,” the head of the animal to be measured ; 
and this he subdivided into three parts, which he called primes; 
each prime into three seconds ; and each second into twenty- four 
points ; making, altogether, 216 subdivisions. Lecoq has reduced 
these subdivisions down to hundredths, and has submitted the fol- 
lowing scale as that of Bourgelat, with some slight improvement^, 
founded upon changes in the position of the head and that of the 
hind quarters. 
Traitc dc rExterieur du Cheval et des Principaux AnimauxDomestiques. 
