GAITS. 



29 



This has just been demonstrated to be a false 

 interpretation of the animal in motion. 



The more an error be propagated, the more must its 

 rectification be sought by means of convincing arguments : 

 the experimental method is, in this case, the most 

 conclusive. 



It has been seen, by what has been already said, 

 that the racing gallop has, for more than a century, been 

 interpreted by an inclination of the neck of the horse in 

 a state of tension 

 approaching the 

 horizontal, the fore 

 limbs apparently 

 swimming parallel 

 with the ground, 

 thus exaggerating 

 their length even 

 to the representa- 

 tion in profile of 

 thefeet of the animal 

 in advance of its 

 nostrils, which, ho w- 

 ever, form the most 



advanced point of the whole body in the ventre-a-terre 

 gallop. 



Protestation has often been made against such an 

 error of drawing, reproduced with deplorable persistency 

 in the Salon, when portraying upon canvas a horse 

 moving with the most exaggerated speed. 



When studying nature, I have had many proofs of 

 the great departure from veracity. I shall describe my 

 last experiment : it was made upon a well-bred mare, the 

 members of which were long in relation to the stature, 

 as will be seen by the statistics appended later. I had 

 just previously made its articulations flexible by walking 

 exercise of several hours duration. 



I had, for assistant, a retired cavalry farrier, accus- 

 tomed to manipulate the limbs of the animals, and an 

 adept at maintaining them in a desired direction. This 

 permitted me to have an anterior limb drawn and held 

 in extreme extension, whilst I sketched the horizontal 

 attitude : I next measured from the neck to the base of 



Fig. 14. 



