92 Modern Riding and Horse Education 



to deal with roug^h ground, fences, and partial ex- 

 haustion, it seems wrong to deprive the horse of 

 the use of his balancing-pole. Freedom is ab- 

 solutely necessary for a supreme effort of any 

 sort : give a prize at a horse show for a wide jump 

 and the horse that has never been allowed to use his 

 neck will be useless. We have recently had illustra- 

 tions of this at the Horse Shows at Buenos Ayres 

 1908 and San Sebastian (Spain) 1909, where the 

 horses that won the wide jump had not been taught 

 to carry their heads in and their necks more or less 

 permanently arched, but had on the contrary always 

 been given full liberty of head in their work after 

 once being trained. 



I happened to know two of the winning horses at 

 the above shows well; one was trained at the Rid- 

 ing Establishment at Woolwich during my term of 

 office, and the other belonged to an officer who was 

 for some time in the same battery with me. The 

 former, "Biddy," winner of the ist prize at San 

 Sebastian and of the 2nd at New York (1909) for 

 the long jump, is depicted in Plate VI. 



Speaking generally, bad hands interfere with 

 the free movement of the head and neck when once 



