UNCONSCIOUS OF IlIS OWN POWER. 105 



ill usage ever been taught to jib, but careful, reasonable, patient 

 treatment from the first, will prevent any horse from being made 

 a jib, however naturally inclined to be so. 



370. — There is a remarkable peculiarity about the instincts 

 of a horse which puts him easily, completely, and helplessly in our 

 power, adds immensely to his value as a servant of man, and to 

 the i)leasure and ease with which the most feeble and timid 

 riders or drivers are enabled to exact his utmost services. 



We gladly and very largely avail ourselves of this well 

 known instinct, in the many cases in which it serves our purpose. 

 We too often ignore its existence, or savagely, mercilessly and 

 stupidly attack it, where it adds a little to our diOiculties. We 

 find it convenient to see the powerful quadruped so unconscious 

 of bis own strength, as to stand all day kept from company, food, 

 water, and every enjoyment, because he will not try to break a 

 slender rope ; and we expect, as a matter of course, that he will 

 let a little child guide him from his pleasure to his work, or allow 

 a lady's hand to restrain him, when either fear or animal spirits 

 would send him off at a reckless gallop, but we beat and torment 

 him mercilessly when the same want of confidence in his power 

 prevents him from pulling again and again at a chain by which 

 we have fastened him to some object which he believes to be 

 immovable, and which is really far less easily moved than the 

 child's arm or the lady's hand. 



371. — In our utter thoughtlessness about the nature of the 

 animal we undertake to instruct, we too often jump to the 

 conclusion that the horse will know ^that he is wanted to pull 

 forwards steadily into a collar, and that he is not wanted to pull 

 backwards at his halter. How is he to know anything of 

 the kind when his nature tells him just the reverse ? When he finds 

 himself entangled nature tells him to back out of it, not to rush 

 farther into it. AVe have seen hundreds of wild horses caught and 

 entangled in various ways, but we never remember to have seen one 

 that expected to get out of his difficulties by a steady pull forwards. 

 A rush backwards is generally the first and most persistent efi'ort, but 

 if nothing gives way in one direction another direction is soon tried. 

 If we saw a horse that had rushed into a thicket which would not 



