36 THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 



touch in the horse), and he will then seldom fail to 

 judge promptly and unerringly whether or not he may 

 venture to proceed. But even when the animal is 

 confined in harness and restrained from the free use 

 of all his faculties, he sometimes exercises his won- 

 derful instinct in the happiest manner. Jn the very 

 month in which we are writing (January, 1 846), seve- 

 ral hundred feet of the viaduct of Barentin over the 

 Rouen and Havre railway came down with a sudden 

 crash. Just before the fall, Monsieur Lorgery, flour 

 merchant of Pavilly, was about to cross one of the 

 arches in his cabriolet, when the horse stopped short 

 and refused to pass. M. Lorgery struck the animal 

 with his whip, but all in vain he refused to stir. At 

 the moment while his unsuspecting driver was still 

 urging him on, the fall took place. 



It is partly owing to the faculty of discerning the 

 obscurest traces of a frequented, or at least a prac- 

 ticable road, and partly to that tenacious power of 

 memory which enables a horse to recognize a road he 

 has once traversed, that bewildered travellers, from 

 the days of knight-errantry downwards, have found it 

 good policy to throw the reins on their steed's neck, 

 and trust themselves implicitly to his guidance. Along 

 with this retentive memory the horse combines a very 

 business-like observance of habit and routine. The 

 author of "The Menageries" knew a horse which, 

 being accustomed to make a journey once a week 



