LECTURES ON HORSES. 
305 
are similar one to another. There is no resemblance, for instance, 
between the shoulders and the haunches, little between the arms 
and the thighs ; but below the knees and hocks, all the four legs 
are constituted alike. The divisions of the fore-extremity are, 
the shoulder, the arm, the cannon, the pastern, the coronet, and 
the foot: the joints are, the shoulder joint, the elbow-joint, the 
knee, the fetlock, the pastern-joint, the navicular -joint, and the 
coffin-joint. Each fore-limb is composed of twenty-one pieces 
or separate bones: — two compose the shoulder, the scapula or 
blade-bone and the humerus ; two, the arm, the radius and the 
ulna ; eight small bones, the knee ; three, the leg, the cannon and 
two splint-bones ; two, the fetlock, the sesamoid-bones ; one, the 
pastern, the pastern-bone ; one, the coronet, the coronet-bone ; and 
two, the foot, the coffin and the navicular -bone. Some of these bones 
are long, some short ; some are cylindroid, some flattened in shape ; 
some are obliquely, others perpendicularly placed : all are connect- 
ed one to another in such manner as to form sorts of hinges or joints 
between them, from which they derive various kinds and degrees of 
motion. 
Viewing the bones of the fore-limb in their natural position 
we find that, instead of its component pieces being ranged in 
perpendicular lines, one upon the other, some of them form an- 
gles with each other, while others descend in straight lines, direct 
from the body towards the ground. The two bones composing 
the shoulder, for instance, are angularly disposed; the arm and 
cannon bones constitute straight shafts of support ; but the pas- 
terns strike off in an oblique direction, at an obtuse angle, and 
thus convey the superincumbent weight to the ground. This 
peculiarity in the direction given to the different bones we shall 
find has its uses. One grand object to be accomplished in the 
formation of the limbs was, to save them from the effects of the 
concussion which, in sustaining so great a weight as the body in 
action, occasionally surcharged too with a burthen in addition, 
must otherwise have fractured their component bones ; nay, crushed 
such as are of a fragile texture into pieces. Another object, in 
the angular formation of the pasterns, has been, as we shall dis- 
cover hereafter, to enable them, in a measure, to compensate for all 
absence of any thing like foot-hold property in the hoofs of the 
horse. 
The Shoulder. 
No individual part of the animal frame, in the estimation of 
horse-people, calls for greater demands on their judgment than 
this : a good or a bad shoulder is held to be of paramount import- 
