INTRODUCTORY. 211 



trace, because the differences in the size of draught- 

 horses and the diameter or heights of wheels require 

 that the traces should be adjusted to certain lengths, 

 and at a certain angle with the horizon. This same 

 angle of traction, as it is called, has been made the 

 subject of many learned controversies, which seem not 

 to have led to any definite result as yet, probably 

 because the men who were directly concerned in the 

 question of draught, and knew something about horses, 

 being on the other hand for the most part totally 

 ignorant of mathematics, and prone to restiveness and 

 to wheeling suddenly round and bolting at the very first 

 sight of the pons asinorum and other ox-fences that 

 abound in Euclidshire because these men, we say, 

 went to learned professors who knew a great deal about 

 mathematics, but nothing at all about horses, and very 

 little practically about roads or carriages. If the poor 

 horses themselves could have been consulted, we should 

 probably have arrived long ago at something more 

 definite ; and even a moderately intelligent veterinary 

 might have put us on the right track, if he had ever paid 

 attention to the subject otherwise than by attempting 

 to heal raw necks and ulcerated shoulders by methods 

 not uniformly successful. And as we have arrived at 

 this point, and probably wounded the just susceptibilities 

 of no end of people, why should we not go a step farther 

 and suggest to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty 

 to Animals that it would attain some of its objects much 

 more certainly by instructing people how they should 

 not harness their horses, than by causing poor ignorant 

 wretches to pay sums of money in fines which might be 

 more profitably expended in forage and this could be 

 easily done. But let us now consider : 



