The Horse, as Comrade and Friend 



the important ^solutions arrived at were at- 

 tained in their company. There was no 

 occasion more favourable for thinking out the 

 more abstruse problems, than when I was 

 able to lie out under the stars on a summer's 

 night, with one warm pony stretched out for a 

 back rest, and the others lying close around 

 me. 



As to the second way, the habits I had 

 acquired of making close and minute obser- 

 vations of the actions of my ponies, which are 

 governed by a multipUcity of direct, remote 

 and interacting stimuli, undoubtedly quickened 

 my abihties to perceive and understand the 

 extremely abstruse forces which enter into and 

 determine the actions of Parachutes, in the 

 very different circumstances of their drops 

 from Free and Captive Balloons, from 

 Airships and from the different types of 

 Aeroplanes, and to learn how to control these 

 forces so that the nature of the Parachute has 

 been changed from that of the most wayward 

 and unruly libertine, into that of a staid 

 machine, of which every detail, and its action, 

 is under absolute control. 



The inter-c or elation of circumstances is 

 always a grim mystery to some dull people, 

 and the aforesaid detractors, of my ponies and 

 myself, of course never dreamed that I was 

 breeding ponies that could help to invent 

 Parachutes. In the National Pony Society's 



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