^Nimrod ' 



It requires, also, some art to load a coach properly. A 

 waggoner on country roads always puts the greater weight 

 over his hinder wheels, being the highest ; and he is right, 

 for he has obstacles to meet, and the power necessary to 

 overcome them diminishes with the increased diameter of 

 the wheel. On our turnpike roads, however, where there 

 is now no obstacle, the load on a coach should be condensed 

 as much as possible, and the heaviest packages placed in 

 the fore boot. Indeed, all the heavier packages should be 

 put into the boots, and the lighter ones only on the roof. A 

 well-loaded coach is sure to follow well, and is always pleasant 

 to ride in ; and as a weak child totters less when it has a 

 weight on its head, coach-springs break less frequently with 

 a moderately heavy and well-adjusted load than with a 

 light one. 



Allowance is made for the retarding power of friction in 

 all kinds of machinery, and of course it is not overlooked in 

 carriages. The coachman sees its effect every time he puts 

 the drag-chain on his wheel, which merely decreases the 

 velocity of his coach, by increasing the quantity of friction. 

 Common-sense must likewise instruct him, that when two 



shaft is nearly even with the top of the fore-wheel ; but when the horse exerts 

 his strength to move a load, he brings his breast so much nearer the ground, 

 that the line of draught is almost horizontal, and in a line with its centre. The 

 trace of a coach-horse, w^en he stands at rest, is also oblique to the horizon, and 

 must be so with low fore-wheels ; but it approaches the horizontal when he 

 is at work, and the nearer it approaches to it the better. Horses draw by 

 their weight, and not by the force of their muscles ; the hinder feet, then, 

 being the fulcrum of the lever by which their weight acts against a load, when 

 they pull hard it depresses their chests — thus increasing the lever of its weight, 

 and diminishing the lever by which the load resists its efforts. 



217 



