116 BIPEDS AND QUADRUPEDS. 



I have been desired in this essay, if so I may call 

 it, to allude to the cruelty, as it was termed when 

 speaking of it to me, of confining a horse by the 

 bearing rein. It is going a little too far to call it by 

 such name, though formerly, when both bearing and 

 gag rein were used, it very nearly amounted to it. 

 A most absurd practice it was ; it certainly gave show 

 horses, like those used in London carriages, an im- 

 posing appearance; still it was false taste. Heads may 

 be carried too high with horses as well as men, and 

 the d(^ng it produces no good result in either ; with 

 the horse there is a certain place or position of the 

 neck and head, that is in unison with true symmetry, 

 and the same degree of elevation does not accord 

 with the general carriage of every horse ; therefore, 

 without reference to the feelings or annoyance of 

 the animal, we should in some cases defeat our own 

 intentions by putting him to the inconvenience, in- 

 deed pain, of a very tight gag. Others, from dead 

 mouths and want of animation, would, without some 

 restraint in the shape of a bearing rein, bore so 

 much on the driver's arms as to be quite intolerable, 



