202 THE HORSE. 



girthing, buckling, curbing, or the continuing of 

 reins nearly worn out. This last instance of care- 

 lessness had lately a very serious effect; the horses 

 ran away with a certain coach from the reins break- 

 ing and the coach was upset. One would suppose 

 that the needful time ought to be allowed, and the 

 greatest care taken in putting the horses to. An- 

 other very important consideration appertains to this 

 subject. Whenever an extraordinary hot summer 

 occurs, we never fail of the intelligence of how many 

 horses have dropped down dead upon the roads, and 

 the number is too often considerable. Now, I have 

 travelled the road occasionally, and not unobservantly, 

 under its three regimes — the old, or five miles an 

 hour; the new, or improving, to which the mail 

 coach plan gave birth ; and the immediate, the ultra 

 or flying regime. Some years ago, in one of the 

 most sultry and dangerous seasons that I have wit- 

 nessed, I took my station on the dragbox of the fast 

 Colchester, in order to get a few hints from the 

 dragsman, whom I had long known to be one of the 

 most respectable, skilful, and steady of his class. 

 Our first topic was, in course, the extraordinary 

 number of horses that had fallen in the late heats, 

 then abated. He pointed out to me a mare, his off 

 leader, " There," said he, " is one of the freest and 

 best bits of horseflesh that ever I sat behind, and I 

 should have lost her at a certainty, indeed she was 

 going, had I not eased her up every hill, and all 

 my sets, by the allowance of between one and two 

 hours in the day." He continued, without reserve, 



