450 



BREAKING AND TRAINING. 



seems vary Jifficult to understand the useful or rational purpose which 

 this peculiar lesson is now intended to support. Some persons assert 

 it is of much service in taming, as it assuredly must tire, the colt. Others 

 declare it teaches the animal to bear properly on particular limbs. A 

 third party assures us it is of infinite service, because it instructs the 

 young horse in leaning toward the rein, and, by not permitting the eyes 

 to be wholly engaged in directing the feet, it obliges the quadruped to 

 employ "high action." 



COPIED FROM THE "SYSTEM OF HOKSEMAKSOIP" BY THE DDKE OF NEWCASTLE. 



The use of the limbs is governed by the natural formation of the body; 

 this last no breaker will undertake to improve. It certainly is assum- 

 ing too much for any art to pretend it can alter that which nature has 

 decreed. A well-formed creature, although it should never have ex- 

 perienced the breaker's instruction, will, of necessity, exhibit grace in 

 its movements. The action of a badly-made quadruped may be tem- 

 porarily disguised, but it will permanently retain only the mode of pro- 

 gression it is fitted to exemplify. By forcing a faulty horse to trot in a 

 shallow stream, or by obliging the animal to move briskly with sand 

 bags attached round the fore fetlocks, a badly-made colt often will, for a 

 space, adopt a higher action; but it is always certain that this step, 



