THE HORSE. 427 



A long tail is not only a great addition to a horse's beauty, 

 but assists the animal in suddenly swinging the body round, 

 as we may observe during the evolutions of our cavalry j 

 and this appendage is also, as Bloomfield says, 



" A weapon of defence, of chiefest good 



When swarming flies contending suck the blood."* 



Although the old Irish practice of making the horse harrow 

 with the rope tied to the tail, instead of attaching it to a collar 

 round the neck, was prohibited three hundred years ago, it is 

 still continued at Erris, in Ireland. The Erris farmer, in defence 

 of the practice, says that the horse's tail was designed to save 

 all sorts of harness, and that as the horse submits to it quietly, 

 and performs the work with apparently greater ease, it cannot 

 be cruel.f Jovius says, that the Italians laughed at the Germans 

 for docking their horses' tails ; and he commends the cruel 

 custom, falsely alleging that it makes the animals fatter. 



The wild horse has no intermediate pace between the walk 

 and the gallop. It is a common but erroneous notion, that the 

 horse, when walking or running, lifts simultaneously the right 

 fore-leg, and the left hind-leg, or vice versa ; and hence in some 

 equestrian statues we see two diametrically opposite legs sus- 

 pended from the pedestal. It is a difficult thing to keep the 

 eye upon four legs, but nevertheless, if a horse be long and 

 carefully observed when it is going at a slow pace, it will be 

 seen that, if one foot is raised from the ground, the other three 

 are on the ground, though all are preparing to leave in their 

 turn, and it will be evident that this process is adopted in its 

 quicker ordinary motions. In some motions the two fore-legs 

 are raised together while the two hind-legs are on the ground, 

 and the latter are raised together when the former are put 



* Mr. Swainson, in support of one of his edifying theories, tries to prove 

 an analogy between the tail of the horse, and what he wrongly calls the " fan- 

 shaped tail of the peacock," meaning the bird's train ; and to do this he finds 

 it necessary to assert that the former like the latter is more ornamental than 

 essential ! (See his Discourse on Natural History, p. 256.) 



f See the Rev. C. Otway's remarks on this subject in the Dublin University 

 Magazine of May 1840. 



