426 
LECTURES ON HORSES. 
The French school, I repeat, regulated their scale of propor- 
tions of the horse by the measure of the head : this regulator, how- 
ever, has by others been objected to ; they arguing that it was 
more in accordance with nature to assume the height of the animal 
as the datum of their calculations. It is an easy matter to prove 
both these methods of proceeding erroneous : the simple question 
seems to be, which is the least so. In one mare, for example, 
whose height is sixteen hands, the head measures, from poll to 
muzzle, twenty-nine inches ; in another mare, of similar breeding 
and height, the length of the head is but twenty-five inches and a 
half, and we all know that horses of the same height may have 
backs long or short, legs long or short, &c. Still, as I have ob- 
served before, this is not a sufficient reason for us to cast away and 
despise all rules of proportion as worthless. To all general rules, 
there are few or many exceptions, and there are no cases in which 
general rules can be applied with so little success as in the form 
and action of animals. Even suppose we could estimate the length, 
and breadth, and thickness of every part concerned in action to the 
greatest exactitude, still are there other most material circum- 
stances, such as the peculiar texture and construction of the parts, 
and the amount of vital energy with which the parts are endowed, 
that regulate in an unknown and incalculable manner the faculties 
and powers of action and endurance possessed by the animal. 
Of all individual parts, the head is that which earliest attains its 
dimensions, and which is the least affected by that growth of the 
body, which depends so much upon the circumstances of food, situa- 
tion, &c. At two years old the head appears to have attained its full 
development ; and, I should say that, as there is less variation in 
the longitude of heads than in the heights of horses, the head, as 
an independent part, affords the best primitive measure we can 
obtain for the foundation of our scale of mensuration. 
In Sainbel’s “ Table of the Geometrical Proportions of Eclipse,” 
the head is “ divided into twenty-two equal parts,” and thus divided 
it becomes “ the common measure for every part of the body.” 
Aware, however, of the fallacy of this standard, Sainbel adds, “ If 
the head appears too long or too short in a horse, that common mea- 
sure must be abandoned, and the height of the body taken from 
the top of the withers to the ground.” Lecoq finds the same diffi- 
culty, and instructs us in such a case to assume as the “ unity of 
mensuration,” two-fifths either of the height or of the length of the 
body ; from which it w'ould appear that the head is to be presumed 
to be of its proper longitude, when two lengths and a half consti- 
tute the measure of either the height or the length of the body of 
the animal. 
We are told by Sainbel, that Eclipse measured 66 inches — 
