LECTURES ON HOUSES. 
183 
broken the ribs into pieces. On the other hand, had the ribs been 
composed from end to end of cartilage only, the form of the arch 
could not have been sustained ; neither could the effects of blows, 
or superimposed weight have been resisted ; but, sooner or later, 
the arches must have become bent inwards, and so encroached 
upon the cavity of the chest as to have compressed the organs of 
respiration and circulation to that degree that could not but have 
ended in suffocation and death of the animal. It was only the 
judicious and well-arranged combination of bone and gristle in the 
construction of the chest that could answer the ends an all-wise 
Providence had in view. 
The chest being the repository for the organs of respiration and 
circulation — the lungs and heart — the grand point for the con- 
sideration of the horseman, in judging of a horse in respect to it, 
is, its form or its capacity, the one being inferred from the other. 
It is natural to suppose that the largest lungs and heart inhabit the 
largest chests, and, cceteris paribus, that horses possessing them 
must also enjoy advantage in wind, as well as such other advan- 
tages as are found to accrue from an ample respiration and circu- 
lation : upon this, in fact, principally depend his powers of exer- 
tion and endurance, as also his constitutional disposition to make 
and maintain condition. Now, capacity of chest will be derived 
from breadth, depth, and length of the cavity. 
Breadth OF Chest is the result of circularity in the arches of 
the ribs : hence a broad and a circular chest amount to the same 
thing, or have only this difference, that, the breadth not being 
always in the part where it ought to be, may be present without 
or with only a part of circularity. For example, a horse that has a 
circular chest will have thick or strong shoulders, and a broad back 
and breast; but in another, the ribs may curve well out from the 
spine, giving breadth of back and thick shoulders, but afterwards 
turn suddenly inward and proceed to the brisket with hardly any 
further curvature ; the result of which is that such a formed chest 
is defective, not only in depth, but in width likewise, except just at 
the superior part. When the ribs proceed from the spine to the 
breast-bone with very little arch or curvature outwards, the animal 
becomes narrow-chested, or, as it is pertinently expressed, flat- 
sided. In a well-formed chest the arches the ribs form from one 
abutment to the other are pretty regularly elliptical, and at their 
inferior ends are lengthened out so as to give as much depth to 
the cavity as is compatible with the general fabric : the curvatures 
of the ribs are conspicuous behind the elbows, and the rider feels 
he hps, when mounted, a good clutch between his legs. The broad 
or circular chest being that which affords the most internal space — 
