ON THE GROWTH OF HORSES. 
A Letter addressed by Mr. Friend to Mr. Fercivall. 
Walsall, August 10th, 1842. 
My dear Sir, — In the last V eteri n aria n you have favoured 
us with a valuable paper on the relative growth of horses, and, 
knowing your anxiety to be correct in all your statements, I am 
sure you will excuse my pointing out an error that has crept into 
that paper. You have stated that, according to the old saying, 
“ the distance from the elbow to the ground, and from the elbow 
to the top of the withers, should be equal.” If this is the way 
you have tested it, I do not wonder at your want of faith in it. 
Do pray try, in a number of your full-grown horses, the measure 
from the exact centre of the elbow to the exact centre of the fet- 
lock joint, and then, as before, upwards to the top of the withers ; 
and I will venture to affirm, that you will not find a variation 
scarcely of a quarter of an inch in your whole regiment. I really 
think this is the very best criterion to judge of the height that a 
colt is likely to attain to after completing his full growth, if 
measured after the age of two years. 
Do pray turn your immediate attention to this, in order to cor- 
rect the mistake in the next number of The Veterinarian 
in the first place, and also to note the difference in the two 
measurements in your young colts. Now, to prove the correctness 
or incorrectness of the theory, l look at it in this light, that if 
the two measures are, as I believe them to be — if correctly taken — 
quite equal in almost every full-grown horse, it follows as a mat- 
ter of course, that, supposing them to be as correctly taken any 
time (I say) after completing two years, that the difference in 
the two measures at least is sure to be added to the present 
height of the animal. The other important point to ascertain 
will be if there is any growth from the fetlock to the elbow. 
Knowing you will receive this as kindly as it is intended, 
I am, dear Sir, your’s truly, 
E. A. Friend. 
Mr. Friend will receive my best thanks for the kind 
manner in which he has reminded me of an error into which I 
had from inadvertence or failure of memory fallen, many years 
having passed since my attention has been drawn to the point. I 
have had sixty horses measured ; and such was the uniformity of 
the result, that at this number l stopped. It was quite singular 
to find how nearly equal the upward and downward measure- 
ments proved. With two or three exceptions, there was not a 
