A treatise on the horse : its diseases, lameness, and improvement : in which is laid down the proper method of shoeing the different kinds of feet ... / by William Osmer.

Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the horse : its diseases, lameness, and improvement : in which is laid down the proper method of shoeing the different kinds of feet ... / by William Osmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Vhap. IV.'] COMPARISON OF BREEDS. dryness of the air. What else, let me ask, are the sinews of a horse, but a cord or string1, composed of many threads or fibres ? Hence it comes to pass, from such temperature of the air, that the sinew of the mountain Barb is as compact as a bar of iron; and hence the degrees of difference betwixt him and some other Asiatic horses, and all other horses of the world—the nature of food being also taken into consideration. But so little to the pur- pose is still understood about the matter in ques- tion, that those very horses are called “ weak, cat-legged things;” whilst our great coarse brutes, with hairy legs, thick skins, and lax fibres, are esteemed much the strongest, by ninety-nine horse- men in every hundred throughout this kingdom. Speaking of Barbs, 1 would be understood to mean those only which I have seen, all having a particular cast or turn in their hinder parts, where- by they may in general be easily distinguished by an observant eye, from the other descriptions of Eastern horses depicted in Plate 2, No. 1, 2, 3. Of Half-breds. The attachment of some men to a half-bred, or what is commonly called “ a good English horse,” is, I think, full as absurd, as the opinion of the sportsmen about blood; they object, that those “ cat-legged things,” as they are pleased to call bred horses, whose legs in general are, by the bye, a great deal larger than they appear to an injudicious eye, are fit for nothing but the race; they say, also, that “ half-bred horses will lose them on some roads with a heavy weight.” Secondly— m 3