66 NEW METHOD OF HORSEMANSHIP. 



tion and movements of the horse. So that whatever may 

 be his disposition at first, it is by first causing the depres* 

 sion of the neck that we will quickly gain a masterly and 

 perfect elevation of it. 



I will close this chapter by some reflections on the 

 supposed diflerence of sensibility in horses* mouths, and 

 the kind of bit which ought to be used. 



Of the horse's mouth and the hit, — I have already 

 treated this subject at lenglh in my Comprehensive Dic- 

 tionary of Equitation ; but as in this work I make a com- 

 plete exposition of my method, I think it necessary to 

 repeat it in a few words. 



I cannot imagine how people have been able so long to 

 attribute to the mere difference of formation of the bars,* 

 those contrary dispositions of horses which render them 

 so light or so hard to the hand. How can we believe 

 that, according as a horse has one or two lines of flesh, 

 more or less, between the bit and the bone of the lower 

 jaw, he should yield to the lightest impulse of the hand, 

 or become unmanageable in spite of all the eflforts of two 

 vigorous arms ? Nevertheless, ii is from remaining in this 

 inconceiveable error, that people have forged bits of so 

 strange and various forms, real instruments of torture, 

 the effect of which is to increase the difficulties they 

 sought to remove. 



Had they gone back a little further to the source of 

 the resistances, they would have discovered that this one, 

 like all the rest, does not proceed from the difference of 

 formation of a feeble organ, like the bars, but from a 

 contraction communicated to the difiTerent parts of the 

 body, and, above all, to the neck, by some serious fault 

 of constitution. It is, then, in vain that we attach to the 



* The bars are the continuations of the two bones of the lower jaw 

 between the masticating and the front teeth. It is on these that the bit rests. 



I 



