526 



ON DRAUGHT. 



weight partly from his fore- legs ; and, extending his hind-legs as in fig. 2, 

 throw the centre of gravity a considerable distance in front of his feet B. AE 

 is here proportionally much greater than in the former case, and the whole of 

 his force is, therefore, advantageously employed. He is, in fact, by his 

 mechanical construction, a beast of draught. 



The same train of reasoning which has here pointed out the species of work 

 peculiarly adapted to the different structures of the man and of the horse, if 

 continued further, will now serve to show the circumstances in which the power 

 of the latter is best applied, and the greatest effect produced. 



We shall here consider both the quality and the degree of the draught. 



And first, it is to be observed, that, although the weight of the animal's body 

 is the immediate cause in the action of pulling, yet, as before stated, it is by the 

 action of the muscles in advancing the legs and raising the body, that this cause 

 is constantly renewed, and the effort continued. The manner and the order of 

 succession in which a horse thus lifts and advances his legs may, of course, 

 influence the movement of his body, and ought therefore to be examined into : 

 accordingly we find that many writers upon draught have touched upon this 

 part of the subject, but they appear to have contented themselves with inventing 

 in their closet the manner in which they conceived a horse must, have moved 

 his legs, rather than to have taken the trouble to go out of doors to see what 

 really did take place, and, consequently, many have arrived at erroneous con- 

 clusions. The ancient sculptors, who generally studied nature so faithfully, 

 either neglected this point, or otherwise our modern horses, by constant artifi- 

 cial training, have altered their step : for we find in the celebrated frieze from 

 the Parthenon at Athens, a portion of which, now in England, is more com- 

 monly known under the name of the Elgin marbles, the only horses which are 

 represented trotting, have both their legs on the same side of the body raised at 

 once, the other two being firm upon the ground a position which horses of the 

 present day never assume while trotting. 



In the case of these relievos, it is true that there are only four horses, out of 

 more than two hundred, which are in the action of trotting, all the others being 

 represented in a canter or gallop ; and only two of these four are entirely in the 

 foreground, and distinct from the other figures. It would not be safe, there- 

 fore, to draw too general a conclusion from this example alone ; but we have 

 another decided proof of the remark we have made, in the case of the four 

 horses of the church of St. Marc at Venice. 



Whether this was then the mode of trotting or not, it is certain that it is 

 never seen to occur in nature in the present day ; and indeed it appears quite 



