214 RESTIVENESS: ITS PREVENTION AND CURE. 



specify, for instance, rearing. Considering the whole 

 rationale of the English system attentively, one is 

 therefore not surprised to find that the forms of rest- 

 iveness in which horses use chiefly their hind legs 

 grow very naturally out of this system, which is unfit 

 for either their prevention or cure without some further 

 aid. We would not be supposed to condemn this 

 system altogether, or unconditionally; on the contrary, 

 we have already pointed out some of its advantages, 

 and shall now proceed to show that it may be made 

 great use of, both as a preventive and remedy. As 

 regards the former, for instance, it affords the only safe 

 means of utilising horses that have weak hind quarters, 

 or defects of the hind legs. Many such animals would, 

 if treated according to the school system, be soon ren- 

 dered either total cripples or incurably vicious ; where- 

 as, by a judicious application of the English method, 

 many a young horse gains time for the hind quarters 

 and legs to develop themselves, and becomes in the 

 end capable of doing even military work. 



As to the cure of restiveness, the English method has 

 this value. The first step to be taken with a restive 

 horse, before any attempt can be made at mastering its 

 hind legs, is to get it to move somehow, for it is only 

 when in motion that the rider can get at it. Now, 

 although it would be worse than useless to attempt to 

 make a horse go under precisely the same circumstances 

 of time and place, &c., under which it has refused 

 obedience, still, by altering these circumstances, and 

 placing it under quite different ones,^we can usually 

 succeed in this. Eor instance, as has been already 

 mentioned, we can take a horse that proves restive on 

 the road into a ploughed field, and, lounging it on a 



