PERSONAL INFLUENCE. 53 



healthy horses which were so listless and stupid that they 

 might be regarded as idiots. My good friend, Mr. Harry 

 Abbott, of Calcutta, owned a horse called Echo, which ap- 

 pears to have been half idiotic. Of this animal, Mr. Abbott 

 wrote : " He was thrown out of training into a large 

 paddock, where he was a source of amusement to every- 

 one, for he appeared half cracked. He used to pick up 

 sticks in his mouth, take them to a corner and make a 

 pile of them ; sometimes he would trot round with his 

 head against his flank for half an hour at a stretch ; he 

 would run after crows or other birds that alighted in the 

 paddock, and chase them with his mouth open." Despite 

 his madness the horse won several races for his owner ; 

 but his wild excitement in trying to break out of his stable 

 on being left behind, when he heard his stable companions 

 going away to a race meeting, was the cause of his being 

 shot as raving mad. 



As the breaker has to work on the material at hand, and 

 as he has no power to change the nervous organisation of 

 the animal, however firmly he may establish the habit of 

 implicit obedience, it is impossible for him to make a 

 naturally sulky horse work with the gaiety of heart and 

 pluck which an honest one will display. This is particularly 

 true out hunting with " faint-hearted " horses, which, no 

 matter how carefully they may have been broken, and how 

 well they are ridden, are often apt to refuse if they get 

 interfered with, or to hang back in a crowd, when we want 

 them to go boldly forward and give a lead over some 

 awkward fence. 



PERSONAL INFLUENCES IN BREAKING. 



I do not believe in the possession of any special power 

 over horses, with which some people are supposed to be 



