570 



THE EXTERIOR OF THE HORSE. 



appear useless to us, for leaping is produced in the horse neither ver- 

 tically nor in a retrograde manner, as it is seen in some other animals. 



FIG. 261. Scheme of the three principal varieties of leaps. 



As to leaping to one side, it is only a variety of one of those which 

 we have enumerated above ; it, therefore, need not occupy our attention. 



1st. The Ascending Leap, or the Leap over a Barrier. It 

 is this variety which we will take for a type. Steeple-chasers and 

 hunters, which have to clear ditches, fences, and walls, as in England 

 and America in the popular fox-hunts, execute it most frequently, either 

 without modifying their speed if the barrier is not too high, or, on the 

 contrary, with a certain fixation of the feet during a momentary period 

 of arrest, permitting them to recognize the nature and the height of 

 the obstacle. In certain cases the body does not fall to the same level 

 as that of its point of departure, when, for example, the horse, in 

 traversing a meadow, leaps over ditches and embankments which lie 

 along the route, and then continues his course upon this route. 



However it may be, the action in all cases comprises three more or 

 less rapid phases : one of preparation, one of execution, and one of 

 descent. 



M. Ottomar Anschiitz has recorded all the successive attitudes by 

 means of instantaneous photographs. We will reproduce, from his 

 series of twenty portraits, the five principal positions which it appears 

 useful to us to study l (Figs. 262 to 266). 



The animal during the first period (preparation) approximates his 

 four members under the trunk, suddenly elevates the head and the 

 neck, and forcibly carries them backward. The anterior columns, at the 

 same time, become rigid and straightened, and raise the anterior quar- 

 ters (Fig. 262), as if the horse intended to rear. 



During the second period (execution) the posterior members extend, 

 in the manner of a bow in the act of unbending, and propel the body 

 upward and forward (Fig. 263). The next instant the body is sent up 



1 For more details, see G. Barrier, SociSte centrale de oi6decine vterinaire (stance du 14 

 Fevrier, 1889). 



