I02 THE HORSE IN MOTION. 



the positions given in the conventional way have their conceptions 

 formed by a false hypothesis; those who are initiated into the true 

 theory of the movement experience no difficulty in perceiving the 

 movements of the limbs in precisely the manner represented in the 

 plates here given, and wonder they never saw them so before. One 

 will recognize this movement more readily in a dog running than in 

 a horse. 



Some of these positions seem grotesque, but for no other reason 

 than because the action is not understood. When it is so, they will 

 appear as necessary progressive stages in a never varying series of 

 movements, the result of which is locomotion, and it will appear that 

 it cannot be performed without them ; the eye that understands them 

 can never be deceived, and the slightest deviation from the law of their 

 co-ordination will instantly be detected in a silhouette as surely as the 

 animal would be to suffer the consequences of a misstep. 



Quadrupeds will be recognized as being possessed of locomotive 

 machinery, self-moving, with all the parts acting in perfect harmony, 

 and not passive projectiles. If Art is the interpreter of nature, as is 

 claimed, she is false to her mission when she wilfully persists in per- 

 petuating a falsehood. But in this case she cannot if she would. 

 Once attention is called to the true theory of quadrupedal motion, 

 the truth of each one of these positions, and the interpretation of them 

 in relation to progression, is so quickly recognized, while the error of 

 the old theory of the gallop becomes so manifest, that artists will no 

 more be able to claim that they represent nature as she seems, when 

 they depict a horse in full run in the conventional manner, or the 

 mythical gallop. 



Plates XXV. and XXVI. represent sketches taken from elemen- 

 tary drawing-books manufactured in London and Berlin and used in 

 the schools. They are heliotyped, on a reduced scale, in order that 

 there shall be no suspicion of inaccuracy in the copies. 



After what has been said, comment is unnecessary ; but I would 

 ask, if animal motion is to be always taught to follow such severely 

 false models, wherein is it better teaching than that of the priests of 

 Osiris, with whom all forms were stereotyped for thousands of years, 



