10 THE BRIDLE BITS. 



yails of a theoretical, as well as a practical knowledge of 

 horsemanship, when the instruments employed in the 

 first principles of its arts are repudiated by a pretended 

 repository of general knowledge, and the people thus left 

 to the stable-boy instead of the library for information 

 on the subject. The bit has a wide field in both its 

 general use and its individual operations which, in the 

 saddle horse's mouth, is or should be magical. Every 

 horse we see employed has a bit in his mouth; every 

 race is lost and won with the bit, and under its manage- 

 ment millions of dollars a vear chancre hands. 



The utmost art of the maker of fancy iron jewelry is 

 centered in the bit and its appendages, of every stylish 

 equipage. The bit plays its part in all the equine feats, 

 interests and operations in every land, whether civilized 

 or barbaric, in both peace and war, and in the truck, cart, 

 car and agricultural interests it plays its most humble yet 

 important part. While in war, a nation might as well 

 lay down its arms as to relinquish the bit. 



Aside from the use of bits in the mercantile world, in the 

 quartermaster general's department of the army millions 

 of dollars were spent for bits alone during our late re- 

 bellion. There were employed in the cavalry branch of 

 our gallant army 375,000 horses. Every horse had two 

 bits assigned him, and without counting the renewal of 

 the supply after the ordinary losses in war, this number 

 alone will suffice to show the demand there was for a sup- 

 ply for that single arm of the service, in which at the 

 present time there are only 20,000 bits supposed to be in 

 actual daily use. 



Outside of this number which is used only with the 

 saddle, the demand for other branches of the service and 

 in civil life, is beyond an exact calculation, but an ap- 

 proximate number and value may be guessed at when we 

 consider that there are thirteen millious and eighty-four 

 thousand (13,084,000) horses and mules in the United 



