THROTTLING HORSES. 15 



Q 



happen to her — namely, a regular runaway — will 

 be prevented. If only one case of this sort was pre- 

 vented by this clever drag, its inventor deserves the 

 acknowledgments of our fair friends, and ten thou- 

 sand times more our own. 



In this particular attention to the well-doing of 

 their horses, our Continental neighbours give us an 

 example we should do well to follow. Even their 

 two-wheeled carriages, where the weight on them is 

 great, are all furnished with a drag, or rather a 

 stopper, to the wheels ; and I understand this is also 

 done in some parts of Scotland : but here a horse is 

 allowed to risk breaking his neck with a cart and a 

 ton and a half to hold do^vn the steej^est hill. 



Various have been the inventions for stopping 

 horses when running away ; some by peculiar bits ; 

 some by disengaging them from the carriage ; some, 

 or one at least, by throttling the horse — I dare say all 

 very clever in their way : but I rather, though very 

 humbly, conceive, that, supposing horses were running 

 away do\vn a hill, bringing them suddenly down by 

 choking them might prove rather an awkward ex- 

 periment, even supposing the choker^ or whatever it 

 is called, did act to admiration. I was told that, finding 

 themselves choking, the horses would graduall}^ stop. 

 I rather think the person who told me so, though a 

 much cleverer man than myself, has not had quite so 

 much to do with runaway nags as I have, or he would 

 know, that, when, running away horses really will 

 lose all sense of danger or pain, lose all instinct, and 

 are in fact like mad horses, and will face certain death. 

 Now, as to the disengaging them from the carriage, 

 of course when horses are going away we may f^iirly 

 conclude something like from sixteen to eighteen 



