Balance 53 



landing, and how the reins alone have saved him if 

 he has been leaning back. Go to any steeplechase 

 meeting in England and observe the poise of the 

 jockey's bodies as the horse is on the downward 

 plane; you will find that about sixty per cent, are 

 sitting more or less as depicted in Plate IX, and the 

 remaining forty per cent, are leaning back — some 

 even behind the perpendicular. In a kindly review 

 of this book in an English magazine, the writer 

 asserts that the jockey in the above-mentioned plate 

 does not bear out my argument, as he has been 

 jerked forward by the shock of landing. I would 

 ask the reader to study the position of the rider's 

 arms and the length of his reins ; if he had been lean- 

 ing back before his horse's fore-legs touched the 

 ground, the animal's head would have been pulled 

 up into an impossible position. 



This statement concerning steeplechase jockeys is 

 not perhaps easy to believe, and a well-known rider 

 who has won the National affirms that it is ridic- 

 ulous, particularly over that course. I was, how- 

 ever, enabled to verify it by the kindness of the 

 " Warwick Trading Company," who gave me a 

 private exhibition on the bioscope of the best pro- 



