304 HORSES ANCIENT AND MODERN. 



wheeled carriages conveying men and merchandise 

 across the vast plains intervening between the oceans 

 of the Atlantic and the Pacific. 



In his t History of the War of Independence/ General 

 Miller attests their efficiency as means of military trans- 

 port : " Our corps consisted of ten six-pounders and 

 one howitzer. Each gun was drawn by four horses, 

 and each horse ridden by a gunner, there being no 

 corps of drivers in the service. A non-commissioned 

 officer and seven drivers were, besides the four already 

 mentioned, attached to each piece of artillery. Buckles, 

 collars, cruppers, and breastplates, were not in use ; the 

 horses simply drew from the saddle, and with this 

 equipment our guns have travelled nearly one hundred 

 miles in a day. 



This vision of horses, minus blinders and buckles, 

 collars and cruppers, may grieve the soul of a saddler. 

 When carried out in the British army it will assuredly 

 rejoice the horse and his rider, and materially aid in the 

 achievement of victory. 



We have long been convinced that blinders are 

 dangerous absurdities. Should they become detached 

 from the poor beast which bears them, he is suddenly 

 aware of the, to him, alarming appearance of a man on 

 the top of a hill, attached in some inexplicable fashion 

 to his tail ; or of a strange hairy animal similarly at- 

 tached, and vomiting smoke and fire. The hill is a 

 load of hay, and the hairy horror is a hirsute hunter, 

 smoking his cigar on his way home from the hounds. But 

 the horse does not know that ; and so, when the blind- 

 ers are suddenly removed, and he sees objects so un- 

 usual, he is seized with a fit of terror which prompts 

 him to flee from them at his utmost speed, which is not 

 diminished by his perceiving that somehow they follow 

 him with equal velocity. 



It cannot be questioned that if the animal had been 

 treated on the rational system of Mr Earey that is, if 

 he had been allowed to see, smell, and touch the vehicles 



