The Military Seat. lOl 



ibr six-year-olds, ii st. 4 lb. = 158 lb., for two miles' 

 6teei:)le-chase. For five-year-olds, 11 st. 7 lb. ==161 lb., 

 and for an aged mare, 12 st.= i68 lb., for a three mile 

 hunter's stakes steeple-chase. These are, we believe, 

 fair samples ; but the horses that carry these weights do 

 it once for all : they are the best of their kind perhaps 

 in the world, and are trained and fed in a way quite 

 beyond the reach of cavalry. The immediate object, 

 too, is to take the most out of the individual horse for 

 the moment ; in fact, all the conditions are different. 



And as to the seat, the hunting rider can adjust his 

 weight as he pleases ; he may vary his position in the 

 saddle, which constitutes the whole of the dead weight, 

 and need not exceed 14 lbs. ; his doing so must not 

 necessarily give his horse a sore back or bruised 

 withers. On the other hand, the dead weight carried 

 by the troop-horse is most usually equal to, in many 

 cases greater, than that of the rider ; a shifting of the 

 seat will therefore necessarily destroy not only the poise 

 of the horse, but, what is still worse, that of the saddle 

 — and this is what kills the horses, or at least sends 

 them into hospital. The cavalry soldier's seat 7nust be 

 therefore fixed, and not subject to variation ; in charg- 

 ing he must bend his body forward, from the hips 

 upward, in order to use his weapons and stand in his 

 stirrups, and this will all suffice to accelerate the speed 

 of his horse. The grand rule is to arrange tlie saddle 

 itself and the stirrups so that the rider can only sit in 

 the proper position^ that he falls naturally into it^ and 

 that it reqjiires no muscular effort to maintain it. If 

 this be not the case, the moment the man becomes 

 tired, or his horse makes a rapid movement, the whole 

 seat is lost, and the muscular effort that should remain 

 altogether available for the sabre or lance, is expended 

 in endeavoring to maintain or regain an injudicious 

 seat. The true seat is therefore in the middle of the 



