^Nimrod ' 



fashionable to have no bearing reins to the harness, which, 

 with horses having good mouths, may be, perhaps, dispensed 

 with ; but the absence of the pad and crupper cannot be 

 unattended with danger.^ 



That, in fact, nineteen accidents in twenty are the effects 

 of want of proper precaution, cannot be denied. Coachmen, 

 it is true, are not theoretical philosophers ; but experience 

 teaches them, that if they drive fast round corners, the 

 centre of gravity must be more or less disturbed by thus 

 diverging from the right line ; and if lost, over she goes : yet 

 a great number of the overturns that occur happen exactly 

 in this way. Why then are not coachmen strictly enjoined 

 by their employers to avoid so gross an error ? But it is in 

 the act of descending hills that the majority of catastrophes 

 take place ; and the coachman needs not book-learning to 

 enlighten him as to the wherefore. Let him only throw up 

 a stone, and watch its descent. If it falls sixteen feet in the 

 first second, it will fall three times that distance in the next, 

 and so on. Thus it is with his coach ; the continued impulse 

 it acquires in descending a hill presses upon the wheel- 

 horses, until at last it exceeds their powers of resistance. 



^ A false notion has lately got abroad, that horses are less apt to fall down 

 with their heads quite at liberty, as those on the Continent are generally driven. 

 Physically speaking, this must be false ; forasmuch as the weight being in this 

 case thrown more forward, the centre of gravity is more difficult to be recovered 

 when disturbed, A short time since, the author saw ten horses out of eleven, 

 in two Boulogne and Paris diligences, with broken knees, and called a respect- 

 able inhabitant of the first-named town to witness the fact. French diligence- 

 horses, however, fall from want of wind, as well as from want of assistance 

 to keep them on their legs. 



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