THE LEVER, THE BIT AND CURB, ETC. 163 



sequence of various arrangements of the mouthpiece 

 and curb, be made to exercise an amount of painful 

 pressure as at A, where 3 parts act on the curb 

 and only 2 on the mouth, which will make the horse 

 bore into the hand ; or as at B, where 3 parts act on 

 the mouth and only 2 on the curb, so that 1 really 

 remains available. Whereas, by reducing the painful 

 action of the curb to 0, as at (7, we find that the whole 

 amount of action may be applied to the mouth, and 

 therefore itself reduced to 2. 



Here we have a key to the whole theory and practice 

 of bitting, and there is no difficulty in understanding 

 that its immediate consequence will be to render bits 

 of small dimensions equally efficient and much more 

 certain and reliable in their action than the monstrous 

 pieces of ironmongery usually manufactured and sold 

 ever can be : and we now proceed to enter into further 

 details. 



The first question that naturally presents itself is, 

 the absolute length of the lever that is to say, of the 

 upper and lower bars of the bit taken together ; the 

 next, that of their relative proportions to each other. 

 Before going into the consideration of these it will be 

 well to clear up one or two preliminary matters, merely 

 premising what is self-evident on inspection namely, 

 that a bit may be regarded as a pair of levers connected 

 together by the mouthpiece. At first sight this might 

 lead to the conclusion that the centre of the rivet on 

 each side is always the point from which the length of 

 the upper and low&r bars is to be measured. This is 

 however only true for those forms of mouthpiece which 

 consist of a port and two lateral straight portions ; but 

 if the whole mouthpiece form one curve, the line of 



