240 DRAUGHT AND HARNESS. 



riding. Let us take the latter first. It has been 

 shown in Part I. of this book that overweighting a 

 horse's forehand, although it may, under certain cir- 

 cumstances, favour speed, can never conduce to either 

 safety, handiness, or lightness of movement, which are 

 precisely the qualities most desirable in a horse that is 

 to be used under the saddle in the way indicated. On 

 the other hand, the tendency of draught, however 

 light, will be always to make the horse himself tlirow 

 his weight on his forehand more or less, and therefore 

 aggravate the effects of our method of training saddle- 

 horses to such an extent that a certain quantity of 

 draught renders it totally unsafe, unhandy, and hea^y 

 in its movements under the saddle. The remedy for 

 these evils is neither very obscure nor very difficult of 

 application. On the one hand, it is only necessary to 

 train and ride our horses somewhat more in balance 

 than we are in the habit of doing, w^hich need not in- 

 terfere much with our national amusements of racing 

 and hunting, because horses are seldom taken out of 

 a gig or waggonette to start them for the Leger or ride 

 to the Quom hounds ; and if we adopt the style of 

 riding recommended here, we shall have in it an anti- 

 dote, as it were, to that tendency of horses in draught 

 to throw themselves on their forehand more or less. 

 We have italicised the two comparative degrees of 

 the adjectives of quantity twice, in order to lead on 

 the reader to discover for himself that some consider- 

 able aid may be obtained by giving up a system of 

 harnessing and hitting that tends to make the horses 

 throw themselves more on their forehands, and adopt- 

 ing one that will enable them to do their work with 

 greater ease, and at the same time tend to throw them 



