86 DRIVING AS I FOUND IT. 



ciipants, and makes the work much lif^hter for the liorse. 

 Some people say that a horse tires sooner in a cart 

 than in a buggy. I can explain the reason in a few 

 words. The horse drawing the cart has twice the 

 weight to pull that the buggy horse has. This is 

 equalized if the cart is balanced right by having oiily 

 two wheels to pull over obstacles, where the buggy has 

 four.' We must not expect the horse to draw and carry 

 the weight on his back at the same time. What is it 

 that makes drawing boats or barges so distressing to 

 horses? The constant weight on their shoulders fro(m 

 their haying no declivities to relieve them. So it is 

 in a mitigated sense with a horse in a cart. He is 

 always or comparatively so at work. A very great 

 error existed for a long time as to the proper ap- 

 plication of weight to horses in two -wheeled vehicles. 

 With some these probably exist still. The error arose 

 from the evident conclusion that the more weight we 

 throw on the horse's back the less there must be on 

 the wheels, and to carry this thing out a much greater 

 proportion of weight was put before the axle in old 

 gigs than in modern ones. Nothing certainly could 

 be more absurd than to suppose this was advantageous 

 to the horse, and yet many sensible men entertained the 

 idea. If we take say 100 pounds off the wheels and 

 put it on the horse's back the wheels woidd certainly 



