No instrument has been invented which can teach a man to know a good book, a good picture, a good dog, a good horse, or a good woman. No such instrument will ever be invented, and that is what makes life so surprisingly unexpected, interesting, and exciting. We may deplore our ignorance, but it is precisely this which keeps us all alive.
To begin with, then, the head of the ideal horse should be lean, the skin fine, the bones prominent, the muscles well developed, showing the masticating apparatus in good working order. The space between the jaws underneath should be broad and well hollowed out There is a saying that a man should be able to put his clinched fist there, but such a test would require a very unhorsemanlike hand. Remember that a horse breathes through his nose, and that the air passages from nostrils to windpipe always must have space. The windpipe should be large and well defined in its detachment from the neck. It is preferable that his profile should be Grecian, or straight, rather than either concave or convex. He should be broad between the eyes for three reasons: first, because that forehead is the roof over the spaces through which he breathes; second, because to it are attached the muscles by which he opens and shuts his mouth; third, because this space also contains the brain. The eye should not be conspicuously small, denoting trickiness, nor unduly prominent, known among horsemen as the "buck eye," and often denoting defective vision. It should be set well up in the head, and when looked into should not show too much white, and should be clear. The eyelids should be thin and comparatively without wrinkles. The lips should be thin and flexible, and without undue length, either above or below.
PLATE VI.—TEETH OF HORSE
The ears should be lean, and the skin and hair on them fine. A quick, decisive movement of the ears gives an air of readiness and determination and usually implies those qualities. A lop-eared, hanging-lipped animal may turn out useful, just as men with faces like Socrates and Savonarola turned out to be saints; but in buying horses and trusting men it is better to go by general laws than by exceptions.
The head should be set on to the neck to give, what is very hard to describe, but easy to recognize, viz. an appearance as though the neck controlled the head, and not as though head and neck were all of one piece. At this juncture of head and neck the distance between the throat and poll should, as compared with the size of the neck elsewhere, be small.
The shoulders, not only for a saddle-horse, but for the harness-horse as well, should be sloping (Plate VIII.). Put a saddle on half a dozen different horses one after the other and note where the stirrup-leathers fall, i.e. how far behind the fore legs. If you have no other way of knowing whether the horse you are looking at has straight or oblique shoulders, this will tell you infallibly. Remember that about this question of shoulders, as about most other points of the horse, much nonsense is talked by the slovenly omniscient, of whom there is a multitude in the horse world. For though, as a rule, a horse can trot and gallop and walk with straight shoulders, he can do none of these exercises, except the last (that not fast) comfortably to himself with straight shoulders. Remember, in examining the shoulder of a horse, that there is the shoulder-blade and also the short bone (humerus) connecting the shoulder-blade with the upper bone of the leg. This shorter bone slopes backward and downward. The shoulder-blade is the better the more it slants, this shorter bone is the better the less it slants. A good horse, whether saddler, road-horse, or harness-horse, steps from the shoulder, not from the knee. Do not be deceived by the up-and-down action from the knee, which is often taken to mean free and high action. The contrary is true. Such a horse can travel all day on a tinplate.