64 THE HORSE AND ITS RELATIVES 



in the Natural History Museum. When the hoofs 

 touch the orround ao^ain after this instantaneous 

 lifting and bending of the legs under the horse, 

 the first to touch it is one of the hind-legs, 

 which is pushed very far forward, forming an acute 

 angle with the body. The shock of the horse's 

 impact on the ground is thus received by the hind- 

 leg which reaches obliquely forward beneath the 

 body like an elastic spring. Since the instantaneous 

 photographs have become generally known, artists 

 have ceased to represent the galloping horse in 

 the curious stretched pose which used to be familiar 

 to every one in Herring's racing plates, with both 

 fore- and hind-legs nearly horizontal, and the flat 

 surface of the hind-hoofs actually turned upwards ! " 

 Later on in the same article it is mentioned how 

 M. Solomon Reinach has shown "that in Assyrian, 

 Egyptian, Greek, Roman, mediaeval, and modern 

 art up to the end of the eighteenth century ' the 

 flying gallop ' does not appear at all. The first 

 example (so far as those schools are concerned) 

 is an engraving by G. T. Stubbs in 1794 of a horse 

 called Baronet. The essential points about ' the 

 flying gallop ' are that the fore-limbs are fully 

 stretched forward, the hind-limbs fully stretched back- 

 ward, and that the flat surfaces of the hinder hoofs 

 are facing upward. After this engraving of 1794 

 the attitude became generally adopted in English 

 art to represent a galloping horse. . . . Reinach 



