FIELD TRAINING 75 



with hunting ; moreover, whatever the soldier does 

 at all he must do well, and must know all the 

 details of it. 



Now, as to the cracking of a whip, it would be 

 pretty safe to bet that certainly one-third, probably 

 one-half, of the people in any hunting-held do not 

 know how to crack their whips so as to get the best 

 result, in other words, properly. It would be 

 almost equally safe to bet, that the same proportion 

 of those who had thongs on their crops had got 

 them attached in the wrong way. And the same 

 bet might again be made that they did not know 

 which was the tJiong and which was the lash. 



Figures i, 2, and 3 show an attempt to explain 

 by illustration the right and the wrong way of 

 cracking a whip. 



We will take the orthodox crack first. Fig. i 

 is intended to show what may be termed the first 

 position, and it gives the approximate position of 

 the hand, crop, and thong when half-way through 

 the motions which end in the crack. There is, of 

 course, no perceptible pause in this position when 

 actually handling the whip. 



Put into words, the procedure is somewhat as 

 follows : — 



The crop, held at the point of balance, not close 

 to the crook, is thrown out along the line a a, and 

 with the same motion is given an upward sweep, 

 which causes the point of the lash to take a course 

 somewhat similar to that shown by the arrows on 

 the dotted line b b b'. 



