[8] Sir C. Bell, `Anatomy of Expression,' 3rd edit. p. 123. See also p.
126, on horses not breathing through their mouths, with reference
to their distended nostrils.
The actions of a horse when much startled are highly expressive.
One day my horse was much frightened at a drilling machine,
covered by a tarpaulin, and lying on an open field. He raised
his head so high, that his neck became almost perpendicular;
and this he did from habit, for the machine lay on a slope below,
and could not have been seen with more distinctness through
the raising of the head; nor if any sound had proceeded
from it, could the sound have been more distinctly heard.
His eyes and ears were directed intently forwards; and I
could feel through the saddle the palpitations of his heart.
With red dilated nostrils he snorted violently, and whirling round,
would have dashed off at full speed, had I not prevented him.
The distension of the nostrils is not for the sake of scenting
the source of danger, for when a horse smells carefully at any
object and is not alarmed, he does not dilate his nostrils.
Owing to the presence of a valve in the throat, a horse when
panting does not breathe through his open mouth, but through
his nostrils; and these consequently have become endowed with
great powers of expansion.
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