218 DEAUGHT Als'D IIAEXESS. 



very restricted in their application, ^Yllicll led the 

 General to make another set on the limber of an 

 ammunition waggon both with and without the instru- 

 ment previously used.t The results became, however, 

 so contradictory that he was obliged to give up the 

 matter in despair; for not only was the relative 

 power of some of the horses, as previously shown on 

 the fixed machine, completely reversed, but the indica- 

 tions of the instrument did not correspond in any 

 way with the different loads placed on the limber, the 

 only fixed result arrived at being that the effort 

 obtained by a sudden violent plunge into the collar 

 {coup de collier) was double that given by the gra- 

 dually increasing pressure of a steady pull. 



Here are discrepancies and contradictions enough 

 both between the practical and scientific men, and also 

 in each group separately. Thcrj is, however, in the 

 quotation we have made from the 'Artillerist's Man- 

 ual,' one sentence that affords a cine to the really 

 important part of the question : we mean the words, 

 ^^The best disjjosition of the traces in draught is lohen 

 they are 2?e7'pendicidar to tlie collar.'^ For it is quite 

 evident that a horse will apply a greater amount of 

 force to the trace when the collar neither causes him 

 pain nor interferes with his muscular action, than in 

 the contrary case, when every effort becomes painful, 

 and must be exerted in a direction that does not accord 

 with the general mechanism of his frame ; therefore a 

 greater useful effect may be attained with traces that 

 are so disposed as to enable the horse to exert his 

 entire strength under a theoretically less favourable 

 angle of traction than when the ease of the animal is 



t A Dynamometer. 



