306 
LECTURES ON HOUSES. 
ance to the animal’s riding and going in such a form as is pleasant 
to his rider, and as tells in action and safety as regards himself. 
The connoisseur steps up to the horse for sale, in his stall, and by 
simply carrying his eye over his shoulder and placing his hand 
upon his withers, determines at once his qualifications, either for 
saddle or harness, and whether he be such a nag as is likely to suit 
him for the purposes he requires. Before, however, I attempt to 
shew by what art this “judge of horses” so summarily and surely 
comes to this point of discernment, it will be necessary for us, 
first, to dissect the shoulder and examine its component parts; 
and, subsequently, to endeavour to analyze and understand its 
action in progression. 
In the skeleton, the shoulder consists of two bones — the scapula 
and the humerus. The scapula or blade-bone — the same that we 
find in a shoulder of mutton — is the proper shoulder-bone; the only 
one in man and the monkey-tribe which constitutes the shoulder ; 
the humerus being — as its name indicates — the arm bone : in the 
horse, however, and in other quadrupeds, both bones go to the 
formation of the part we call the shoulder. Although, in an ana- 
tomical point of view, the fore leg of the quadruped corresponds 
with the arm of a man or a monkey, yet are there such differences 
in their structure as we might expect to find from knowing how 
vastly unlike they are in their economy : the arm of the quadru- 
ped, in fact, becomes a leg ; the hand, a foot ; and the offices of both 
altogether transposed. A man has it in his power to crawl or 
walk upon his hands and feet somewhat after the manner of a 
quadruped ; a monkey does so by nature, at the same time that he 
possesses the power, to a certain degree, of erecting himself and 
Avalking upon two legs like a man, and using his fore limbs after 
the manner of arms : although, however, the monkey makes use 
of his upper or anterior extremities in this double capacity, neither 
in progression nor manipulation is he any thing like so perfect as 
quadrupeds on the one side and man on the other. It is the pro- 
jecture of the humerus from the body — its connexion with the 
trunk by the head alone — which, with a somewhat different form- 
ation of joint between it and the scapula, enables the bone to 
perform all the various motions we see the arm of a man capable 
of : whereas, confined and bound to the sides of the ribs, as we 
behold it in the quadruped, it is simply susceptible of bending 
backwards and forwards, or, at least, of very little other kind of 
motion. 
The scapula, being a broad flat bone, presents two large sur- 
faces ; an inner one, which is uniform and smooth, and a little ex- 
cavated in order to adapt it the better to the convexities of the 
arches of the ribs, against which it is applied ; and an outer one ; 
