THE SADDLE. 55 



What is the legitimate use of the stirrups besides en- 

 abling us to mount our horses 1 The first and most ob- 

 vious one is to give the rider lateral support, to prevent 

 his slipping off to the right or left by his seat revolv- 

 ing round the horse's body as a wheel does round an 

 axle. In riding bare-backed, or on a saddle without 

 stirrups, if the rider falls it is most generally to one side, 

 and not directly forwards or backwards ; and it is very 

 evident that the more directly under the rider's seat 

 the stirrups be suspended, the more efficiently will they 

 perform this duty, the resistance offered by them being 

 perpendicularly upwards, or precisely in the opposite di- 

 rection to that in which the weight falls, which is per- 

 pendicularly downwards ; whereas, if the stirrups be 

 suspended at a distance from the rider's seat, they act 

 at an angle to the line of fall : they may, and always do, 

 in such a position change the direction of the fall, but 

 they cannot meet and prevent it so efficiently as when 

 placed under the seat. The second use of these con- 

 trivances is to enable the rider, for various purposes, 

 to rise in his saddle by standing in the stirrups. And 

 here a distinction must be drawn as to whether it is 

 the rider's object to transmit his own weight indirectly 

 through the stirrups to the saddle at the same point at 

 which he previously applied it directly with his seat, 

 or at some other point. In the first case it is very 

 obvious that the stirrups are best placed exactly under 

 the rider's seat ; for, putting aside any changes of the 

 position of his own body from the hips upwards he 



very glaring ones that are very obvious in the French seat, and were 

 the immediate causes of all the sore backs in the campaign of 1859, 

 depend on the wrong position of the stirrup in the respective mili- 

 tary saddles. 



