754 
IMPROVEMENT OF AGRICULTURAL HORSES. 
4 
hence facilitates the animal’s movements, whether in the 
hunter or the cart-horse; and the conformation which is 
best adapted to the support of weight and to freedom of 
action cannot but be the nearest to the perfect type of horse 
of whatever breed or variety. The chest of the cart-horse 
should be full and deep, the barrel tolerably round, and what 
the horseman terms well ribbed upthe coat should be 
fine and short, and the skin moderately thin and easily 
moved; the two latter points being sure indications of good 
blood and careful treatment: although, of course, in using 
the terms fine coat and thin skin, we shall be understood to 
be speaking comparatively, as the expressions do not bear 
the same significance as when applied to the higher breeds. 
Soundness, in the sense of freedom from constitutional 
disease, is absolutely indispensable to the production of a 
healthy progeny. Certain maladies and imperfections may 
exist in the parents without interfering with their fitness for 
stock animals; but, however slight the development of here¬ 
ditary affections, they should ahvays be regarded as disquali¬ 
fications. Such diseases as cataract, ophthalmia, broken 
wind, and tendency to ossific deposits, ought to exclude an 
animal at once from consideration, although from their fre- 
pent occurrence among draught-horses such a course would 
erially lessen the number of breeding animals. 
{To he continued^ 
CROONIAN LECTURE ON THE COAGULATION OE THE 
^^LOOD, DELIVERED BEFORE THE ROYAL SOCIETY, 
^'^JULY 11, 1863. 
By Joseph Lister, Esq., F.H.S., F.R.C.S. 
{Continuedfrom]). 687.) 
It has been long known that if the blood be stirred with a 
rod, the process of coagulation is promoted. It seemed de¬ 
sirable to ascertain distinctly whether the cause of this w’as 
the contact of the foreign solid, or the opportunity given 
for the escape of ammonia i for it is quite true that in the 
ordinary process of stirring blood, more or less air is mixed 
with it. For the purpose of determining this I devised a 
somewhat complicated experiment, which, however, it may 
be worth while to mention. I made an apparatus of two 
portions of glass tube, connected in a vertical position by 
means of vulcanized india-rubber, the lower portion of the 
