LECTURES ON HORSES. 
603 
Independently, however, of original constitution, muscular fibres 
will be large and clean and fit for action according to the exercise 
or work they may have been in the habit of performing for some 
considerable time past. When we hear it said that one horse (of 
the same breed) is “ in condition,” and another “ not,” we may take 
it for granted that the muscles of the one have, through a course of 
exercise and labour, called training, been got into that state of per- 
fection wherein they are capable of performing double or treble 
what they could have done in a state of idleness or comparative 
inactivity ; and hence it is that by all connoisseurs in horseflesh so 
much importance is ever laid upon condition. The same horse in 
condition and out of condition might be, without much hyperbole, 
pronounced to be quite a different species of animal ; for not the 
muscles only, but the bones, and no doubt other parts as well, 
under such totally opposite circumstances, undergo, in the course of 
time, very material alterations in their composition. Indeed, to 
minute differences of texture existing between the organs of loco- 
motion in animals of high and low breeding — taking into our ac- 
count the amount of nervous energy either respectively possess — 
would appear to be mainly attributable those differences of action 
and capability so characteristic of the two breeds. The race-horse 
and cart-horse have the same number and shape of bones and mus- 
cles, the same locomotive apparatus, in fact, both as regards frame- 
work, jointing, arrangement, and distribution ; and yet nobody 
expects the cart-horse to run a race, or the race-horse to go to 
plough or drag a brewer’s dray. St. Bel took up this interesting 
question, and considered the explanation of it to reside in the re- 
spective weights of the animals and in the “ mechanical arrange- 
ment” of the locomotive organs. His words are, “ How different is 
the gallop of the large dray-horse from that of the race-horse ! It 
is with difficulty that the former moves his body to determine it 
into the place required. He gathers the ground heavily under him 
at each step, and the translation of his bulk is but tardily effected. 
The latter, on the contary, flies like an arrow from a bow, and scarce- 
ly imprints the ground with his shoe ; often running over a space 
of four miles in less than eight minutes. These are, however, but 
individuals of the same class. The number of parts which conspire 
to effect their respective progression is the same in each ; but these 
parts differ in their bulk, their extent, and their direction ; from 
whence result different degrees of power in the levers which they 
form. So that we are not to imagine that the mass or weight is 
the only cause of his slowness, which rather proceeds from mechani- 
cal arrangement of the parts, whose relation and correspondence 
determine the extent of his motions.” No doubt, allowances must 
be made for “ the mass or weight” of the cart-horse as compared 
