4 
LECTURES ON HORSES. 
now-a-days, notorious enough among “ judges of horses,” that size 
and bulk are indispensable for the carriage of heavy weight and 
for the draft of heavy carriages : a lightly made horse, however 
intrinsically good he may be, cannot perform in such situations. 
We must take care, however, not to run away with the impression 
that, in animal structure, capacity, or what is called “ goodness,” 
increases in direct ratio with greatness. When it does — which is 
only now and then — nothing short of the same size and volume can 
prove equivalent to it. Every horseman well knows that “ a good 
big horse” will always beat a good little or less horse, the difficulty 
being to find the former. Everybody has a good pony. There 
hardly ever was known a bad one. But how few persons have 
possessed good sixteen or eighteen-stone-carrying hunters! Our 
best racers and hunters have all been great or big horses — horses 
15..2 or 16 hands high, and large in proportion. Need I mention 
the names of Selim, Reubens, Castrel, Sorcerer, Soothsayer, Vol- 
taire, Charles XII, Middleton, Velocipede, Camel, and, last and 
greatest of all, Harkaway I or need 1 say to my reader , — “ go into 
Leicestershire, and look at the hunters there, and you will see my 
observations amply enough verified?” so that, when goodness is 
combined with greatness, perfection is nearer approached than in 
any other form. 
The following mares were equally remarkable for size and excel- 
lence : Altisidora, Fleur-de-Lis, Queen of Trumps, Crucifix, and 
Orelia. 
When I speak of largeness or bulk, I am not meaning fatness : 
a fat horse is a proportionably weak horse. Adeps, or fat, is an 
oily matter, itself unendowed with life or sensibility, contained in 
cells, as honey is within the honey-comb, which are vital, and en- 
dowed so that they have the power either of adding to or taking from 
the quantity of oily matter at anv time existing. The use of fat is to 
fill up crevices in the body, facilitate the movements of parts one 
upon another, and serve as a sort of internal nutriment, in case 
the animal should be in a situation where he cannot obtain food : 
but, when it accumulates, instead of facilitating the motions of 
parts, it clogs and impedes them, and becomes, from its collected 
amount of weight, a burthen to the body. A fat horse is not only 
unfit to go, but really has a weight within himself to carry which 
the horse in condition for work has been disencumbered of. A 
fat horse will not bear the loss of blood the same as a horse in a 
working state of body; the one will faint from the abstraction 
of a quantity which the other will stand without being affected. 
Plumpness, which arises from fatness, is too apt to convey to the 
eye of the inexperienced the impression of strength and ability to 
go to work ; whereas it ought, I repeat, be taken as a proof to the 
contrary. When a purchaser enters a dealer’s yard to buy a horse, 
