150 THE HORSE 



fesaional performer, gifted with so much strength and activity, and 

 skilful in so many quick, artful tricks and dodges, that any country 

 practitioner that comes to deal with him is no sooner up than 

 down, to rise from his mother earth with a vague, bewildered, in- 

 coherent idea as to what had befallen him, or ' how he got there.' 



" If a horse of this description and a wild one in his own 

 jountry were to be mounted there simultaneously, each by an 

 jqualiy good rider, both the quadrupeds, probably at the same 

 iioment, would be seen to run away; the Briton forever, to gain 

 lis liberty; the other quadruped, just as surely, to lose it I" 



Nothing can better convey to the reader the difficulties which 

 the English horse-breaker has to contend with, than this extract 

 from the pages of Sir V. B. Head, who has had ample opportuni- 

 ties of judging both the varieties oif" the species which he (|(iscribes. 

 It shows the necessity for the cautious proceedings which I have 

 endeavored to describe as the proper mode of breaking our young 

 horses, and which I am satisfied will enable the breaker to perform 

 his task in a way which will be satisfactory to his employer. It 

 may, however, be worth while to examine into the methods adopted 

 in the French school, as first introduced by M. Baucher. 



His "Metijod op Horsemanship" was published nearly 

 twenty years ago, and has been generally received on the continent, 

 where the principles of the maniye have always been more highly 

 prized than in this country. The author tells us, as his first prin- 

 ciple, "that all the resistances of young horses spring from a 

 physical cause, and that this cause only becomes a moral one by 

 the awkwardness, ignorance, and brutality of the rider. In fact, 

 besides the natural stiffness peculiar to all horses, each of them 

 has a peculiar conformation, the greater or less perfection of which 

 constitutes the degree of harmony that exists between the forces 

 and the weight. The want of this harmony occasions the un- 

 gracefulness of their paces, the difficulty of their movements — in 

 a word, all the obstacles to a good education." To remove these 

 iefects, M. Jiaucher adopts certain methods of suppling the neck, 

 m which he considers the chief obstacle to perfect action resides. 

 Without going into the long details of the various supplings, it will 

 be sufficient to describe the general division of the work which the 

 author considers necessary. This, he thinks, must extend to two 

 months, divided into one hundred and twenty lessons of half an 

 hour each, two being given each day. During the first series of 

 eight lessons, the breaker will devote twenty minutes to the sta- 

 tionary exercise for the flexions of the jaw and neck, which can 

 hardly be efficiently described without the illustrations given in 

 the book itself. During the remaining ten minutes, he will make 

 the horse go forward at a walk, without trying to animate him ; 

 applying himsel/ all the time to keeping the horse's head in a per- 



