64 Scats and Saddles. 



nearly an equal influence on the stability of the saddle, 

 and a much greater one on the form of the seat than the 

 position of the girths. If the stirrups be wrong, all the 

 rest being right will be of little avail.* What is the 

 legitimate use of the stirrups besides enabling us to 

 mount our horses ? The first and most obvious one is 

 to give the rider lateral support, to prevent his slipping 

 off to the right or left by his seat revolving round the 

 horse's body as a wheel does round an axle. In riding 

 bare-backed, or on a saddle without stirrups, if the 

 rider falls it is most generally to one side., and not 

 directly forward or backward ; and it is very evident 

 that the more directly U7ider the ridei'^s seat the stir- 

 rups be suspended, the more efficiently will they per- 

 form t/iis duty, the resistance offered by them being 

 perpendicularly upward, or precisely in the opposite 

 direction to that in which the weight falls, which is per- 

 pendicularly downward ; whereas, if the stirrups be 

 suspended at a distance from the rider's seat, they act at 

 an angle to the line of fall : they may, and always do, 

 in such a position change the direction of the fall, but 

 they cannot meet and prevent it so efficiently as when 

 placed under the seat. The second use of these con- 

 trivances is to enable the rider, for various purposes, 

 to rise in his saddle by standing in the stirrups. And 

 here a distinction irust be drawn as to whether it is the 

 rider's object to transmit his own weight indirectly 

 through the stirrups to the saddle at the same foint at 

 which he previously applied it directly with his seat, or 

 at some other point. In the first case it is very obvious 

 that the stirrups are best placed exactly under the 



* Any defects that may exist in the English cavalry seat, and the 

 very glaring ones that are very obvious in the French seat, and were 

 the immediate causes of all the sore backs in the campaign of 1859, 

 depend on the wrong position of the stirrup in the respective mili- 

 tary saddles. 



