146 FORM AND ACTION. 



perseverance on the part of their riders, get a knack of it ; others 

 there are that cannot by any means, harsh or mild, be made to per- 

 form it ; but in the effort are driven either into the butcher's hitch 

 or into the jumble of trotting before and galloping behind. Lecoq 

 calls such horses foibles, weak; and it is not unlikely some of 

 them are so, either from natural formation or in consequence of 

 some inflexibility of the loins or hocks, &c. We are far from being 

 able, however, at all times to say to what the incapacity is owing. 



Having considered the order of movement of the limbs in the 

 trot, and made some allusion to the intervals of time consumed in 

 grounding the feet and in making the necessary revolutions with 

 them in the air, we come now to look at the relative positions they 

 occupy in action, and see how it happens that they do not inter- 

 fere one with another. In the slow or ordinary trot, the hind 

 limbs are so carried underneath the body that their foot-marks fall 

 near about those made by the corresponding fore feet : the fore foot 

 has no sooner left its place of implantation than the hind foot occu- 

 pies it. In the walk, the hind feet ordinarily in part cover the 

 prints of the fore : as soon as the animal strikes into a trot, they 

 quite cover these prints ; and as the speed increases their relative 

 advance gradually becomes greater, until the hind overstep the 

 fore feet, and would and must tread upon them, were it not that 

 the former were advancing in different lines of direction from those 

 in which the latter are stepping. Mostly, these lines are within 

 the other; the hind feet of a well-going horse treading (by turns) 

 quite under the middle line of the body — that line along which the 

 centre of gravity moves — and in this manner avoids collision with 

 the fore feet : in some instances, however — in horses that " go wide 

 behind" — the hind feet are planted to the outer sides of the fore 

 ones, and thus equally advance clear of them. There are instances 

 or occasions where they take the same line of progression with the 

 fore feet, and then collision *is the inevitable consequence — over- 

 reach as we term it. This, however, is a rare occurrence, save 

 when the horse is thrown out of his natural action or forced beyond 

 his ordinary effort by the injudicious or inhuman conduct of his 

 rider or driver. 



I have shewn, in another place, that strength and flexibility of 



