78 SEATS AND SADDLES. 



because the pace has evidently a good deal to do with 

 the form of the seat. For, in fact, men of fifty years 

 old and thereabout can scarcely fail to remember that 

 the length of our saddles has been increasing constantly 

 with the rapidity of the pace ; and although an increase 

 of the bearing surface of the saddle, as has been already 

 shown, is an admirable thing in itself, no great advan- 

 tage is derived, so far as the horse's back is concerned, 

 unless the rider be placed in the centre of the saddle. 

 But our saddles have been lengthened chiefly for the 

 purpose of enabling us to get further away from the 

 stirrup, so as to use this as a point of support, not 

 against falling to the right or left, but to prevent one's 

 being pulled right over the horse's head in fast galloping 

 and jumping ; and thus many riders whose object really 

 is to throw their weight somewhat forward, because 

 this favours speed, actually come to sit almost on the 

 loins of their horses, where they seriously impede the 

 action of the propellers, and are then compelled to 

 throw their body forward in the most inconvenient and 

 unsightly manner/ 1 ' No doubt if this system were not 

 found to answer the purpose more or less it would 

 scarcely be persevered in. When, however, we find 

 some of the best authorities recommending, and many 

 of the best living riders practising, something very 

 different, one begins not only to doubt its being even 

 relatively good, but also to look with a more critical 

 eye to its positive disadvantages. They are these : It 

 involves unnecessary wear and tear of the horse's fore 



* Sir F. Head says, in ' The Horse and his Eider,' p. 33, " The 

 generality of riders are but too apt to sit on their horses in the bent 

 attitude of the last paroxysm or exertion which helped them into 

 the saddle, called by Sir Bellingham Graham a wash-ball scat." 



