Bourgelat,[37] in the eighteenth century, fixed for the first time and in complete fashion the proportions of the horse; it is he, consequently, who created the æsthetics of the horse. It is but justice to recall the fact. His system has a point of analogy with that which is employed to determine the human proportions. Indeed, Bourgelat chose the length of the head as a standard of measurement, and the subdivisions of the head for measures of less extent. 'Since beauty,' said he,[38] 'resides in the congruity and proportion of the parts, it is absolutely necessary to observe the dimensions, individual and relative, and in order to acquire a knowledge of the proportions, to assume a kind of measure which can be indiscriminately common for all horses. The part which can serve as a standard of proportion for all the others is the head. Take a measurement between two parallel lines--one tangent to the nape of the neck or the summit of the forelock, the other tangent to the extremity of the anterior lip--a line perpendicular to these two tangents will give you its geometrical length. Divide this length into three portions, and give to these three parts a special name, which may be applied indefinitely to all heads--as, for example, that of _prime_. Any head whatsoever will, accordingly, in its geometrical length, always have three _primes_; but all the parts which you will have to consider, whether in their length, in their height, or in their width, cannot constantly have either one prime, or a prime and a half, or three primes; subdivide, then, each _prime_ into three equal parts, which you will name _seconds_, and as this subdivision will not suffice to give you a just measure of all the parts, subdivide anew each _second_ into twenty-four _points_, so that a head divided into three _primes_ will have, by the second division, nine _seconds_, and two hundred and sixteen _points_ by the last.' [37] Claude Bourgelat, founder of the veterinary schools in France. He was born at Lyons in 1712, and died at Paris in 1779. [38] Bourgelat, 'Éléments de l'art vétérinaire. Traité de la conformation extérieure du cheval,' Paris, edition of 1785, p. 133. But where this system appears to us to have lost somewhat of its unity is when the author transforms it, in pointing out the following mode of procedure: 'But the head itself may err by default of proportion. This part is not, indeed, considered as either too short or too long, too thin or too thick, but by comparison with the body of the animal. Now, the body, being required to have--whether in length, reckoning from the point of the arm to the prominence of the buttock, or in height, reckoning from the summit of the withers to the ground--two heads and a half; whenever the head, by its geometrical length, shall give, in length or in height, to the body measured more than two and a half times its own length, it will be too short; and if it gives less, it will be too long.