VETERINARIAN. 
VOL. XLV 
No. 535. 
JULY, 1872. 
Fourth Series. 
No. 211. 
Communications and Cases. 
ON A RACE OF HORSES WITH THIRTY-FOUR 
RIBS. 
By G. Fleming, M.R.C.V.S., Royal Engineers. 
For a number of years much attention has been paid to 
the history of the most useful of all the domesticated ani¬ 
mals, the horse, and the sciences of anatomy and palaeon- 
tology have been brought to bear in attempts to elucidate its 
origin from one or more sources, as well as in tracing its gra¬ 
dation in type from extinct species. Not long ago a distin¬ 
guished French veterinarian, M. Sanson, successfully proved 
that the pure bred Arab horse was specifically distinct in its 
anatomical characteristics from other horses, the principal 
differential feature consisting in the presence of only five 
lumbar vertebrae. We know that in the ass, and sometimes 
also in the mule, this is the usual number, and that six is the 
rule in the horse; though rarely seven have been noted, with 
the ordinary complement in the other regions. And it has 
also been remarked that there are sometimes nineteen dorsal 
vertebrae, with an equal number of ribs; but that in these 
instances there are only five lumbar pieces. M. Sanson has 
endeavoured to establish the fact, that in the typical Arab 
horse there is the usual instalment of cervical and dorsal 
vertebrae and ribs, but only the five bones in the lumbar 
region.* 
In one of the most remarkable and learned works ever de¬ 
voted to the history of the horse,f whether considered from a 
* “ Memoir sur une Nouvelle Determination d’un Type Specific de Pace 
Chevaline a Cinq Vertebres Lombaires,” ‘Journal de l’Anatomie et de la 
Physiologic/ May, 1868. 
f ‘ Les Origines du Clieval Domcstique.’ Paris, 1870. 
xlv. 32 
