" HOBBLING/' 307 



ments of the season have been paid, add all the songs 

 to the guitar exhausted." 



At the suggestion of Sir F. Head, hobbling has been 

 adopted by the mounted troop of the Koyal Engineer 

 Train ; and any one visiting Aldershot is now enabled 

 to see six or eight horses hobbled at intervals of about 

 thirty feet, standing motionless, while the riders of the 

 rest of the troop to which they belong, with drawn 

 sabres flashing in the sun, are galloping through them 

 backwards and forwards. As cavalry horses could be 

 made to do the same, that noble branch of our army, as 

 well as our yeomanry cavalry, would be able to act as 

 mounted infantry by merely carrying hobbles weighing 

 a couple of ounces. 



Let not our readers deny themselves the pleasure 

 and the profit of perusing l The Horse and his Eider,' 

 under the notion that an old officer like Sir Francis 

 Head can tell them nothing that they do not already 

 know. Are they acquainted with "hobbles and anchors ? " 

 with the best mode of swimming a horse ? with the use 

 and abuse of spurs ? with how to bring a hunter home ? 

 with the fact that, though a groom ought to keep his 

 horse clean, his primary study is to clean his stable ? 

 that it is almost impossible to keep straw under a horse 

 perfectly pure, and that throughout the United States 

 of America, and even in New York, horses are often 

 made to lie on bare boards, on which they seem to 

 sleep as soundly as, in a state of nature, they certainly 

 do on the ground baked hard by the sun ? Or have 

 they ever heard of how much damage and suffering to 

 horses are prevented by the unilateral system of shoe- 

 ing, which Mr Turner, of Kegent Street, London, terms 

 " half-nailing," which consists in affixing the shoes by 

 nails in the outside and round the toe only, leaving 

 the inner side totally unsecured? Do they know the 

 merits of " Fitzwilliam girths ? " Are they, in short, as 

 wise as Sir Francis Head ? who, he tells us, sometimes 

 from private inclination, and sometimes for the benefit 



