150 TROTTING. 



332. — No class in America seems quite free from a mania 

 for showy trotting horses. Some of the most aristocratic 

 equipages may be seen to abandon the dignified eight miles an 

 hour for a regular butcher's tear-a-way at sixteen miles an hour, 

 whilst the ordinary farmers' sons will let their horses crawl, when 

 out of sight, to prepare them for a fly past of the crowd. The 

 effect of this taste on the horses of the country has not been very 

 different, and certainly not worse, than the taste for galloping races 

 in England. In both cases strong propelling hind quarters have 

 been demanded, good heart and lungs, good pipes, good circulation, 

 and good constitution. In both cases the strong, powerful, short 

 knit, enduring horse has been sacrificed to one with weaker, because 

 more reaching and lighter limbs. The ugly, ungainly, straddling 

 action that allows the hind feet to pass outside the fore ones, 

 is naturally tolerated by those who seek great trotters. 



333. — The most common national fault that we noticed in 

 the education of North American horses is the hardness of their 

 mouths. In not a few cases the horses are taught to trot their 

 best when the reins are tightened, and to stop when they are let 

 slack. Drivers are constantly seen with the reins wound round 

 their hands, and evidently doing the work that ought to be done 

 by the traces. 



334. — Several modern American books on the horse are very 

 rough on the horse's mouth. With them mouth punishment is 

 the general remedy for all vice, and is made too much the medium 

 of instruction to the colt. In such books too we find instructions 

 given as to how a horse's mouth is to l)e systematically hardened, 

 and the animal taught to " pull up to the rein." Even in their 

 public trotting matches, hanging on to the mouth seems to be 

 regarded as an essential condition of making the best of a trotting 

 horse. The same books instruct their readers how to teach a horse 

 to stand stock still with a whip cracking in his ears. We must say 

 that we prefer the old fashioned method of teaching a young 

 horse to move for the whip and stop for the reins. 



335. — So long too as persons generally use their right hand 

 we can see nothing gained by the American and French system 

 of meeting a vehicle by turning to the right. The danger to fast 

 drivers is greatly increased by this departure from English custom. 



