LECTURES ON HOUSES. 
5 
every horse shewn him, most likely, — certainly every horse four 
or five years old, — is fat, and therefore not in a condition for work. 
Dealers, by quantities of manger-meat, bruised oats, hay-chaff, 
&c., and by giving their horses only such little walking exercise 
as serves to keep their legs from filling, make the horses they have 
for sale as fat as they can, and for two reasons : — 1st. Fat fills up 
the crevices, and conceals any imperfections there may be of 
outward form : it is the horse-dealer’s putty. By it, like the 
coach-maker, he makes his article for sale appear more perfect, 
or freer from defects than it really is. — 2dly. By it he gives an 
appearance of size and bulk to the articles, which pass for signs of 
strength and ability, but which, as I said before, are in reality an 
indication of weakness. No men are better aware of the disadvan- 
tages arising from the presence of fat than trainers and jockeys. 
“ Such a horse is too fat to win his race,” is a remark not seldom 
heard, even at the starting-post on the race-course ; when all signs 
of obesity, it is expected, have — or most assuredly ought to have 
— vanished. How many hunters are there distressed — shall I say 
killed ] — at the beginning of the hunting-season, or before Christ- 
mas, to what there are afterwards] A “judge,” going to view a 
hunting stud, feels the horses upon the ribs and along their crests, 
and pronounces, at once, one to remain too “ gross” or fat, another 
to have been over -reduced: his experienced eye and hand telling 
that in the stable which to another only becomes discoverable on 
actual trial. 
In young horses, the adeps or fat is mostly deposited upon the 
external parts, — -upon the superficial muscles, — and is, conse- 
quently, found immediately underneath the skin ; but horses seven 
or eight years old, and upwards, are very disposed to accumulate 
fat inwardly — about the kidneys and bowels, and upon the belly, 
internally. A horse may evince very little fatness outwardly, and 
yet be loaded with fat “ in his inside.” Fatty matter deposited 
among the fleshy parts or muscles of the body, and between their 
fibres, renders them loose in texture and flabby in feel ; the adeps 
occupying that space which, in the horse in hard condition, is filled 
by clean muscular fibre. 
The good great horse is not made up of fatty substance. He has 
large bones, large joints, and large muscles; and in these, and these 
alone, consist his superior physical powers. The skeleton is of 
large dimensions. There is evidence, in the length of the bones 
and in their bold and prominent projections, of considerable lever- 
age. The muscles distributed upon it have evidently had every 
advantage of action, their further power depending entirely upon 
their own innate bulk and composition. 
The time is now arrived for us to take a view of the fabric and 
mechanism of 
