1.4
The bones (of the pastern) above the hoofs and below the fetlocks should not be too upright, like a goat’s: such legs give too hard a tread, jar the rider, and are more liable to inflammation. Nor yet should the bones be too low,The pasterns (of the hackney) should neither be too oblique, which bespeaks weakness: nor too straight, which wears the horse out and is unpleasant to the rider.—Blair in Loudon’s Agriculture. else the fetlocks are likely to become bare and sore when the horse is ridden over clods or stones.
1.5
The bones of the shanks should be thick,Wide would be a more suitable word. since these are the pillars of the body; but not thick with veins nor with flesh, else when the horse is ridden over hard ground, these parts are bound to become charged with blood and varicose; the legs will swell, and the skin will fall away, and when this gets loose the pin,The Greek word means the fibula in man, but the fibula, of course, is no part of the shank in the horse. Morgan rightly says that X. writes throughout of the horse as he appears outwardly, and not of the skeleton (with which he was unacquainted), and that the allusion is to the back sinew of the shin. too, is apt to give way and lame the horse.
