138 Bits a7id Bitting, 



degree of equilibrium that the horse may have attained ; 

 but the reader will perceive that v^'hat is called softness 

 or hardness of mouth must depend, to a certain extent, 

 on the dimensions of the bit corresponding accurately 

 with the interior conformation of this organ. The most 

 perfectly-adapted bit will not convert a raw remount at 

 once into a trained horse or give him a proper carriage 

 and feeling — all this is done gradually with the snaffle ; 

 but when the horse has once acquired the carriage and 

 the degree of feeling that may be required, then no 

 pains should be spared in bitting him correctly — other- 

 wise all the previous labor is lost. 



And this brings us to a very difficult and very im- 

 portant point. Each style of riding, to use a common 

 expression — or everv particular kind of service that may 

 be demanded of a horse, to use a more correct one — • 

 demands a corresponding variety of carriage and degree 

 of feeling, and consequently of bitting. On the three 

 older continents we find the following styles predomi- 

 nant : School-riding, as a preparation for the circus or 

 for military purposes, and what may be called natural 

 riding. What we understand by this latter is not how 

 the farmer jogs to market with a sack of wheat behind 

 his saddle, but the methods of riding adopted and 

 transferred from generation to generation among those 

 nations or large communities who are compelled to live 

 on horseback, either in self-defence or to gain their 

 existence, or for both reasons. This is, in fact, un- 

 cultivated military equitation ; and the purely empirical 

 principles on which it is founded are such that they 

 readily accommodate themselves to the scientific prin- 

 ciples of school-riding, with which it, however, only 

 comes in contact in the east of Europe, if we except, 

 perhaps, our own Indian possessions and Algeria. 



Cossacks, Circassians, Hungarians, Poles — these are 

 the European and Western Asian representatives of the 



