170 NOTES ON FIELDS AND CATTLE. 



arm from elbow with perfect freedom of the knee 

 and fetlock joints, and an apt replacement of the 

 forefoot by the hindmost quickly plied, is the most 

 costly essential about a hack. 



Once behold, and you can never forget it. There 

 is a power of might and lightness blended in the 

 stride of a free gallop, as in the movement of a 

 clever trot : a style of going opposed altogether, and 

 equally, on the one side to the stilty, stiff, unsightly 

 bounding of the Barb, as on the other hand to that 

 supernal ambitious cabriolet step, which is said — I 

 hope falsely — to be taught literally by training the 

 poor brute on a hot floor, from which he vainly 

 essays to lift his aching feet ; or, again, by attaching 

 sand-bags to his legs, from which he is continually 

 trying to get his feet clear, until finally the action 

 becomes habitual. Action must be natural in a 

 great measure ; it cannot be taught, though it may 

 undoubtedly be improved. With that object the 

 London dealers trot their young horses in yards deep 

 strewn with haulm or straw ; and the Americans are 

 said to train them across balks of wood laid parallel, 

 the distance between them being increased as the 

 pupil gains in skill and speed. 



In a first-class cow, pig, sheep, the broad back 

 should be so straight and level, that if a plank were 

 laid along it from the top of the shoulder, upon the 

 hip or pin-bones, to the " fool's point " — that is, the 

 bones on either side the tail, so called from every 

 one's feeling it as he first approaches an animal, 

 without reason that he can allege — rain water would 



