THE EDUCATION OF A HORSE. 305 



for you could not break your horses much under 

 that time." 



The old school reply : — " We could have backed 

 our horses quite as soon as you do, but we did 

 not choose to do so. It is a great mistake to 

 suppose that we were obliged to lunge a colt 

 nearly to death (as some assert) before we dared get 

 upon his back ; — we did nothing of the kind, — 

 and for the best of all reasons ; we did not take 

 advantage of his tired and prostrate condition to 

 mount a colt after lunging, because he had a 

 dumb jockey on his back, according to our sys- 

 tem. Colts were not to be backed until they had 

 passed through the first preliminary lessons pre- 

 paratory to being mounted. You begin where we 

 left offy entirely reversing the order — we say nuces- 

 sary order — in a horse's education. We ground 

 our pupils well in their grammar before we put 

 them into Virgil or Horace. We say, Bimidium 

 fadi, qui bene ccepit, Jiabet ; in short, we will not 

 get upon a colt's back until we have taught him 

 how to move and change his paces." 



I have seen scores, I may say hundreds of horses 

 backed, but not broken. Colts at farm-houses 

 are mounted and ridden about by boys, when 

 scarcely two years old, and made to carry an}'^- 

 thing, from a sack of corn to a sucking calf; and 



* X 



