92 RIDING AND TRAINING SADDLE-HORSES. 



pupils of Baucher a great advantage oyer those who haye 

 learned his system from his books alone. 



The gallop will never be perfectly easy and perfectly 

 safe until it is what is called perfectly " cadenced " — the 

 fore-feet and the hind ones striking the ground with 

 equal force, and both neck and tail being perfectly supple. 

 A horse travelling in this way may trip over a rolling 

 stone at every tenth step without any danger of falling, 

 and he will perform a journey of twenty miles with much 

 more ease to himself and his rider than he would make 

 even five miles with, as is usual, most of the force of 

 every leap falling on the fore-feet. 



In accomplishing all this, as much depends on the per- 

 fect balance of the rider's temper as on the balance of his 

 weight. Above all must nothing provoke or startle him 

 to a rough handling of the bit, which is his chief means 

 of communication with the horse; a mistake will be 

 interpreted precisely as an intention would be, and a very 

 few mistakes will suffice to confuse all previous teachings. 

 'Tirm as a grasp of steel, yet soft as a touch of love," 

 this describes the perfect hand, and while it should yield 

 to the horse's proper movements and restrain his improper 

 ones, as it can do only when guided by instinctive intel- 

 ligence, it should be as independent of the movement of 

 the rider's body and of its efforts to keep a proper seat as 

 though it were an iron hand attached to the pommel of 

 the saddle. The legs, too, should be ever ready to per- 

 form their office — the thighs, to preserve the rider's seat, 

 and the lower limbs ever on the alert to restrain any in- 

 terruption of the equilibrium by reason of a faulty posi- 

 tion of the horse's hind-legs. 



