62 SEATS AND SADDLES. 



loss of time on account of the blanket ; and cavalry in 

 camp or bivouac is or at least should be always 

 covered by outposts, and is therefore scarcely liable to 

 surprise, and two or three minutes can make no possible 

 difference where it is a question of preserving the effi- 

 ciency of the horses for weeks, months, and years. But 

 the superior officers are impatient, their personal credit 

 is involved in the turning out rapidly : ay, that's it. 

 Let the blankets be properly folded at daybreak regu- 

 larly, and let the horses be saddled too with loose 

 girths, whether you know if you are to turn out or not, 

 and there is an end of the blanket difficulty, and of 

 many others too. 



With regard to the crupper. If your saddle fit 

 properly, and if you sit in the proper way, you don't 

 need a crupper. If neither of these "ifs" be a verity, 

 then the crupper may prevent the saddle running for- 

 ward, but will also wound the steed's tail, or set it 

 a-kicking, especially if a mare perhaps, under favour- 

 able circumstances, both together ; in either case you 

 must take off the crupper, and what then ? It is better 

 to begin voluntarily, with a well-fitting saddle and a 

 good seat, than be kicked into it ; and therefore the 

 cavalry crupper is an absurdity which everyone else in 

 the world has thrown away ages ago ; and which the 

 Austrian, Bavarian, and, we believe, many other 

 German cavalries, discarded some fifteen or sixteen 

 years since. 



In some of the mounted troops of the British Army 

 an attempt has been made, it would seem, to ascertain 

 whether the crupper can be dispensed with or not, and 

 it is stated that the men decided very generally in 

 favour of retaining it, because they found that without 



