h we have spoken of as the dropping of the body
upon one extremity or the other, and this can readily be detected by
attending closely to the motions of the head and of the hip. The head
drops on the same side on which the mass of the body will fall, dropping
toward the right when the lameness is in the left fore leg, and the hip
dropping in posterior lameness, also on the sound leg, the reversal of
the conditions, of course, producing reversed effects. In other words,
when the animal in trotting exhibits signs of irregularity of action, or
lameness, and this irregularity is accompanied with dropping or nodding
the head, or depressing the hip on the right side of the body, at the
time the feet of the right side strike the ground, the horse is lame on
the left side. If the dropping and nodding are on the near side the
lameness is on the off side.

In a majority of cases, however, the answer to the first question
relating to the lameness of a horse is, after all, not a very difficult
task. There are two other problems in the case more difficult of
solution and which often require the exercise of a closer scrutiny, and
draw upon all the resources of the experienced practitioner to settle
satisfactorily. That a horse is lame in a given leg may be easily
determined, but when it becomes necessary to pronounce upon the query as
to what part, what region, what structure is affected, the easy part of
the task is over, and the more difficult and important, because more
obscure, portion of the investigation has commenced--except, of course,
in cases of which the features are too distinctly evident to the senses
to admit of error. It is true that by carefully noting the manner in
which a lame leg is performing its functions, and closely scrutinizing
the motions of the whole extremity, and especially of the various joints
which enter into its structure; by minutely examining every part of the
limb; by observing the outlines; by testing the change, if any, in
temperature and the state of the sensibility--all these investigations
may guide the surgeon to a correct localization of the seat of trouble,
but he must carefully refrain from the adoption of a hasty conclusion,
and, above all, assure himself that he has not failed to make the foot,
of all the organs of the horse the most liable to injury and lesion, the
subject of the most thorough and minute examination of all the parts
which compose the suffering extremity.

The greater li