THE CHEST. 
o49 
speed,—he would not do for ordinary quick exertion ; and if he 
were pushed far beyond his pace, he would become broken- 
winded or have inflamed lungs. 
o 
Saddle-Horses .—Some of our saddle-horses and cobs have 
0 
barrels round enough, and we value them on account of it, for 
they are always in condition, and we can never tire them. But 
when we look at them more carefully, there is just that departure 
from the circular form of which I have spoken,—that happy me¬ 
dium between the circle and the ellipse, which retains the capacity 
of the one and the expansibility of the other. Such a horse is in¬ 
valuable for common purposes, but he is seldom a horse of speed: 
if we let him go his own pace, and that not a slow one, he will work 
on for ever; but if he is put at his speed, he is soon blown and 
knocked up. And if by chance, deluded by the common notion 
of a “ good round barrelled horse,” we select one who possesses 
that form a little too perfectly, why, we shall have an animal 
that will do credit to our keep,—always on the grub,—as fat as 
a pig, but as lazy as a drone ; and lazy, because he feels the incon¬ 
venience of rapid progression, in not being able to accommodate 
the capacity of his chest to the increased demand for arterialized 
blood ; and he feels it much more painfully than w r e give him 
credit for, or we should not lay the whip so lustily about him. 
The Broad Deep Chest .—Then for the usual purposes of the 
road, and more particularly for rapid progression, we look out for 
that form of the chest which shall unite, and to as great a degree 
as possible, considerable capacity in a quiescent state, and the 
power of increasing that capacity when the animal requires it. 
Then we must have the broad chest for the general capacity, and 
the deep chest for occasional increase of that capacity,—the 
broad chest for the production of muscles and sinews, and the 
deep chest, the expansion of which, added to the natural broad¬ 
ness, shall give a capacity, or power of furnishing arterial blood 
equal to the most rapid exhaustion of vitality. 
This form of the chest is consistent with lightness, or at least 
with all the lightness that we can rationally require. The 
broad-chested horse, or he that, with moderate depth at the 
girth, swelk and barrels out immediately behind the elbow, may 
have as lignt a forehand and as elevated a wither, as the horse 
with the narrowest chest; while the animal with the barrel 
approaching too near to rotundity is invariably heavy about the 
shoulders and low in the withers. It is to the mixture of the 
Arabian blood that we principally owe this peculiar and advan¬ 
tageous formation of the chest of the horse. The Arab is light; 
some would say too narrow before, but immediately behind the 
arms the barrel almost invariably swells out, and leaves plenty of 
VOL. V. 4 E 
