278 EESTIVENESS : ITS PREVENTION AND CUBE. 



horses use chiefly their hind legs grow very natu- 

 rally out of this system, which is unfit for either their 

 prevention or cure without some further aid. We would 

 not be supposed to condemn this system altogether, 

 or unconditionally ; on the contrary, we have already 

 pointed out some of its advantages, and shall now pro- 

 ceed to show that it may be made great use of, both as 

 a preventive and remedy. As regards the former, for 

 instance, it affords the only safe means of utilising 

 horses that have weak hind quarters, or defects of the 

 hind legs. Many such animals would, if treated according 

 to the school system, be soon rendered either total 

 cripples or incurably vicious ; wheras, by a judicious 

 application of the English method, many a young horse 

 gains time for the hind quarters and legs to develop 

 themselves, and become in the end capable of doing 

 even military work. 



As to the cure of restiveness, the English method has 

 this value : The first step to be taken with a restive 

 horse, before any attempt can be made at mastering its 

 hind legs, is to get it to move somehow, for it is only 

 when in motion that the rider can get at it. Now, 

 although it would be worse than useless to attempt to 

 make a horse go under precisely the same circumstances 

 of time and place, &c., under which it has refused 

 obedience, still, by altering these circumstances, and 

 placing it under quite different ones, we can usually 

 succeed in this. For instance, as has been already 

 mentioned, we can take a horse that proves restive 011 

 the road into a ploughed field, and, lounging it on a 

 wide circle, compel it to go without risking a conflict of 

 authority in which we might probably have the worst 

 of it. Or we may take the same animal into some 



