To Put a Collar on. 



355 



indeed, in hard-worked establishments it is often not unbuckled from one year's end to another. 

 In single-horse phaeton or gig harness, fashion permits the buckle to be placed within a few 

 inches of the splinter-bar, where it can be more easily got at ; but fashion docs not permit 

 this sensible arrangement in brougham or double harness. 



The buckle is of little real use ; it is considered an ornament, otherwise it would have been 

 discontinued long since in private carriages, as it has in public cabs. A substitute, introduced 

 more than twenty years ago, is a peg and slide patented by the late Mr. White, of Tewkesbury, 

 first exhibited at the International Exhibition of 1851. It lies flat, and allows the length of a 

 trace to be easily shifted. It has not made the way that might have been expected, because 

 the cost is somewhat greater than that of the old buckles, and saddlers have no incitement to 

 use or advertise a rival's invention ; but of its superiority to the buckle for traces there is no 

 question. P^or pair and leader harness, this flat White tug is particularly neat. It does not 



STRAP AND BUCKLE. 



® QB 



m^ 





WHITE AND COLEMAN S SUBSTITUTE. 



TILBUKY TUG. 



WOODEN l;lr, 

 FOR HREAKING. 



answer well for the pad-tugs or cruppers of single harness. Messrs. Lennan and Son, of 

 Dublin, have patented a simplification of White's invention, which certainly is an improvement 

 as far as cruppers and pad-tugs are concerned, but it is very doubtful whether, applied to 

 traces, the iron peg will retain its place under the strain of a hard pull. If it will stand, there 

 is no reason why harness made on the Lennan plan should not be as cheap or cheaper than 

 with the old buckle, which can only be opened by tremendous exertion. 



The first step in harnessing is to put on the collar. To put a collar over a horse's head, 

 the hames ought either to be removed or to be strapped on very loosely. The collar must 

 then be taken upside down in both hands, and after being stretched on the knee to the utmost 

 limits, pulled as wide as possible at the moment that it is passed over the eyes. 



Manjf horses with broad foreheads have had their eyelids torn and their eyes cruelly in- 

 jured by efforts to force over their heads a tight collar, or a collar on which the hames have 

 been buckled tight to save the groom trouble. If the groom's common sense and humanity 

 are not to be trusted, he should be peremptorily forbidden to put on a collar without removing 

 the hames, and a two-foot rule should be employed to ascertain that the collar can pass over 

 the head without injury. 



When the collar is on, the hames must be tightly buckled at the top with a sound strap, 

 for everything depends on their holding fast, whether in single or double harness. 



For breaking in )-oung horses a collar that opens at the top will be found useful ; it 

 spares them one cause of fright. 



Collars have been the subject of innumerable patents, but, with the exceptions already 

 mentioned, the old form, probably of Norman origin, retains its superiority. When a horse has 



