THE LEVEE, THE BIT AND CURB, ETC. 187 



the usual gradual manner ; and the width of the mouth- 

 piece is therefore insufficient to give the upper bars, 

 especially the rings, the requisite degree of play ; or 

 rather, the latter will most probably gall the horse's 

 cheeks more or less. There are two ways in which 

 this may be readily avoided; first, by inclining the 

 upper bars somewhat outwards (fig. 1 4, a\ or by making 

 the upper ring movable (fig. 14, 5), instead of its forming 

 a continuation of the upper bar. Either of these meth- 

 ods will be found to answer the desired end, without 

 interfering with the proper action of the bit, and are 

 not only unobjectionable, but should be always resorted 

 to when necessary, because nothing is more common 

 than to see unthinking riders reject a bit whose mouth- 

 piece has the proper dimensions, and adopt one that is 

 a quarter or half an inch too wide, simply because they 

 find that the upper bars do not fit the outside of the 

 horse's head ; in fact, this is what frequently leads to a 

 wrong selection of bits. People think of the outside 

 and visible part, and neglect altogether the much more 

 important interior of the mouth and the mouthpiece. 



It may be useful to summarise here the whole of 

 what has been explained in detail in the preceding 

 pages. We may say, then, that the average height of 

 the bar of the horse's mouth being If inches, the 

 upper bar of the bit need never be longer, except, per- 

 haps, in very rare instances of horses 18 hands high 

 and upwards ; and this gives us 3-| inches for the 

 lower bar, and for both a total of 5J inches, measured 

 from where the curb-hook rests in the upper ring to 

 where the lower ring plays in its socket. For ponies 

 or small hacks these dimensions must be reduced to 1^ 

 inches upper bar, 3 inches lower bar, and total length 



