198 EQUINE LOCOMOTION 



other intervals. The weight in the hand-gallop being more equally dis- 

 tributed than in the common canter, it is distinctly less fatiguing to the 

 horse. 



THE GALLOP 



With the eye accustomed to the results of instantaneous photography, 

 it will be difficult indeed for the next generation to understand the reluc- 

 tance of the artist and the horseman to give up, as proved fallacies, the 

 preconceived ideas as to the attitudes assumed in the various paces. Until 

 the publication of such series of photographs as those taken by Muybridge 

 in America, and by Hayes in England, to say nothing of previous efforts in 

 the same direction on the Continent, many artists held on to the hope that 

 at least the gallop would be spared, and that the horse extended so as to 

 have no limb to straighten against the ground, and supported only by the 

 atmosphere under his belly, might be allowed to remain as it had come 

 down to them through centuries. It should be remarked, however, in this 

 connection, that several of the early Greek writers afford evidence of their 

 more accurate estimate of the precise movements of the horse in locomotion, 

 and the application of photography to this question goes to show that they 

 were on the road to the discovery of what has for so many centuries since 

 been a mystery, only to be revealed at last by the highly-sensitized plates 

 and improved lenses which enable the photographer to fix for us images of 

 animals in motion. With a range of twenty-four cameras, acted upon by the 

 breaking of a cotton thread, Mr. Muybridge was enabled to take pictures^ 

 (reproduced in Plate XII) of horses galloping past at all stages of the pace; 

 and this has since been done by Captain Hayes, whose work on Points of 

 the Horse will be found to supply details which space forbids in this article. 

 But for the conservative attitude of the public in matters of art, Muy- 

 bridge's photographs would have spoilt the value of what are still regarded 

 as priceless works of the old masters, and as it was, there was considerable 

 anxiety expressed by holders of many paintings of repute in which horses 

 are represented in what we now know to be impossible attitudes. From 

 the point of view of present-day artists, it may be said that the grace and 

 symmetry of the leap -creations of a former generation of draughtsmen 

 must be abandoned in favour of the more accurate definitions with which 

 photography has supplied us. 



The gallop is a "four-time" pace, in which the intervals are equal. The 

 feet follow in succession, and there is a period of suspension between the 

 putting of the leading fore-foot and opposite hind one to the ground. The 



' In his preface to The Horse in Motion, Mr. Leland Stanford says, " The time occupied in taking e.ach of 

 these views is calculated to be not more than the five-thousandth part of a second ". 



