144 



HORSEMANSHIP. 



the mouthpiece, because the port has sufficient room to allow 

 the tongue to move with ease, an advantage of which it 

 would be deprived if the mouthpiece were without this 

 movement. 



Amongst horsemen generally there are erroneous views 

 as to the action of the port. It is commonly believed 

 that when the mouth-piece, by the elevation of its port, bears 

 against the palate, the rider or driver has greater command 

 over the horse ; so the poor quadruped is tortured by bar- 

 barisms such as gridiron swing and stop ports, sliding ports, 

 solid gridiron ports, Turkey ports, and other devices designed 

 to bear against and bruise the palate. The power of the bit 

 depends solely on the proportion of the branches. A too 

 low and small port, however, is as bad as one that is too 

 high, for it acts with similar violence on the tongue, squeez- 

 ing it between the cannons of the mouth-piece and the bars, 

 and forcing it to assume an unnatural position. When a horse 

 is seen to loll out his tongue, or to be constantly gaping or 

 opening his mouth, depend on it the poor animal is seeking 

 relief from some defective construction of the bit. The 

 habit is a great annoyance, but the owner has it in his power 

 to eradicate it. 



Anyone noticing the hansom cab horses of the metropolis 

 must be convinced of the prevalence of a habit of boring 

 to one side of the street and of perpetually hanging on one 

 rein. There is nothing more irksome, not to say dangerous, 

 to rider or driver than a one-sided mouth, nothing more 

 difficult to cure. It arises in the first place from one of the 

 bars becoming more callous than the other, owing to greater 

 use being made of one rein than of the other, producing, by 

 unequal pressure, greater friction on one of the bars. Reins 

 of unequal length may cause this defect of mouth. When 

 once the mouth assumes this one-sidedness, the horse. 



