The Arabs have a proverb that "there should be four points of a horse long, four short, and four broad." The long are the neck, the forearm, the thigh, and the belly; the short are the back, the pastern, the tail, and the ear; the broad are the forehead, the chest, the croup, and the limbs. The head should be small and bony; that of an English thorough-bred of fifteen and three-quarter hands will measure twenty-two to twenty-four inches in length, with the forehead eight to ten inches broad, the face dishing below the eyes. The withers should be high, the shoulder as broad as possible--not fleshy, but bony--and lying at an angle of about forty-five degrees. The chest should be broad and deep, to give room for lungs and heart. The knees should be broad, the hoofs large, and not flat, but deep.
The reasons for some of the above recommendations may be made clearer by a rough comparison between the frame of the horse and that of man. For instance, the shoulder of the former, from the withers to its forward point at the joint, is equivalent to the shoulder-blade and collar-bone of the latter, and a broad shoulder is as sure an indication of strength in the one as in the other. If the horse is "short above and long below," it gives him a carriage similar to that of a man with a full, broad chest, who holds his head high and his shoulders back.
The knee of the horse corresponds to the human wrist, and his _hock_, or "back knee," as the children call it, to our heel. The shank of the fore-leg, then, or the part between the knee and fetlock, corresponds to the hand, and the hoof and pastern to the fingers; while the shank of the hind-leg, or the part between hock and fetlock, corresponds to our foot, the hoof and pastern being the toes. The horse may thus be said to walk upon the tips of his fingers and toes, and it will readily be seen why the leg weakens in proportion as the pastern and shank lengthen. The arm proper of the horse is very short and almost concealed from view, reaching from the forward point of the shoulder to the elbow, which is close against the side.
The more oblique the shoulder, the greater the power of this arm to throw the forearm forward, so as to support the body in the gallop, and in coming down from a leap. A straight shoulder is adapted for pulling loads, but is not fit for the saddle, except upon level roads, becoming positively dangerous in broken ground. The two upper members of the hind-leg, reaching from the hip to the hock, are together commonly called the thigh, as the thigh proper, which stretches from the hip to the stifle-joint, is very short and almost concealed from observation. The stifle-joint, which corresponds to our knee, lies close against the flank. Read the description, to some extent traditional, of the wonderful mare Swallow, in Kingsley's "Hereward the Wake." She was evidently not from Arab stock, with her big ugly head; but horses--like men and women--of extraordinary strength, and beauty too, are sometimes happened upon in the most unlikely places. Indeed, in many an ungraceful form there is stored up an amount of vital energy which explains the saying that one can find "good horses of all shapes." Nevertheless, the presumption is always in favor of the well-shaped animal, and the acknowledged type of equine beauty is the English thorough-bred. This is of pure Arab blood, but so improved by many generations of careful breeding and training that it now excels not only all other European and Oriental races but the modern Arab himself, that is considered to be, weight for weight, twenty-five per cent. stronger than other breeds. One invariable mark of Arab blood, by-the-bye, is a high and graceful carriage of the tail. The eye should be kind and quiet, that of an Arab very gentle, even sleepy, when at rest, but full of fire and animation when in motion.