157 



THE CANTER. 



1 have already observed that the canter may be regarded rather 

 as an artificial than as a natural pace ; not that it is never seen in 

 a state of nature, for, as I said before, foals may not infrequently 

 be seen cantering after their dams : still, however, to perform it 

 well or gracefully requires more training and practice than any 

 other of the paces. Distinguishable at once as the genuine canter 

 is from the genuine gallop, yet may a horse's gallop be so re- 

 duced or his canter so increased in speed that it may puzzle any 

 of us to say whether the pace he is going be really a gallop or a 

 canter. Mr. Blaine conceives that " at no period in this pace (the 

 canter) is the horse all in air;" " whereas in the slow gallop 

 there is a period in which the legs are all in air ; so an essential 

 difference occurs." Were Mr. B.'s data founded in fact, the distinc- 

 tion between the paces of canter and gallop would, indeed, no longer 

 puzzle us ; but the canter, no more than the gallop, is not uniformly 

 executed by all horses : some horses there are that canter so slowly 

 that, as Mr. Blaine observes, they have " always a point of con- 

 tact with the ground : " others, on the contrary, there are that at 

 every step in their canter manifestly carry all four feet off the 

 ground ; and so confound any definition we might construct in 

 accordance with the going of the former. Lecoq calls the canter 

 a gallop with four beats, and thus distinguishes it from the ordinary 

 or hunting gallop, which has, he says, three beats, and from the 

 racing gallop, to which he assigns but two. I need not, however, 

 repeat here, it is my opinion that these asserted differences are 

 not founded in observation. That, according as the rate of speed 

 varies from the canter to the fleetest gallop, there will be great 

 differences in the time of succession of the beats of the feet 

 I have already admitted ; but, that their order becomes different, 



furlongs, and ninety-three yards, in six minutes and forty seconds. He also 

 ran over the Beacon course, which is four miles, one furlong, and one hundred 

 and thirty-eight yards, in seven minutes and thirty seconds; covering at every 

 bound a space of twenty-five yards. On one occasion he made a spring or 

 leap, with his rider on his back, on level ground, of twenty-five feet. Childers 

 died at the age of twenty-six." 



