With the clue given to this inquiry in Chapter VI. we need have little difficulty in tracing the manner in which his locomotive life, ancestral and personal, is engraved on his hairy coat. We shall bear in mind the primitive direction of his hair, hair-streams, lines of least resistance, and the powerful forces of underlying traction of muscles, opposed or divergent.
It is, of course, most convenient to examine a specimen with a fine, short coat rather than one with its wild and more shaggy hair remaining.
The two regions where the play of great forces comes most powerfully into action during locomotion are round about the elbow-joint (which we should be disposed to call the shoulder) and the hip-joint, in which regions the range of extension and flexion, as well as the number of muscles engaged, is much greater than at any other part of the limbs. It is in the neighbourhood of these two regions that the most characteristic of all the patterns of hair are found, and the names given to the patterns (whorls, featherings and crests) in these critical areas are Pectoral (Fig. 30) and Inguinal (see Fig. 31) with a third (G, H, I, Fig. 31) which is called Axillary, and is not constantly present. The main muscles involved in Figs. 30, 31 are shown in Fig. [33]. The Frontal (Fig. [32]) is another of the critical areas, indirectly concerned in locomotion, and will be considered first.
Fig. 31.—Side-view of horse showing inguinal whorl, feathering and crest A, B, C, and axillary whorl, feathering and crest, G, H, I.
The Frontal pattern forms the star on a horse’s forehead, often very noticeable when the hair of it is white. No detailed description is required if the illustration of it in Fig. 32 be studied. It is enough to point out that it lies at or very near the level of the eyes, sometimes a little above and sometimes a little below this, and there is occasionally a double whorl, the second lying above the normal one.
