182 



THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



GOING IT BLIND. 



U is jistonisiliiiig- liow thc3 gi-o;it majority of 

 iiiankiud go tlimugli the world witli their eyes 

 shut. Bearcely a single day passes iu the sum- 

 mer season, but some ingenious person or other 

 fetches us, as a great and stupendous rarity, 

 some eommon butterfly or other, of wliicti all 

 but those, who wilfully keep their eyes sluit, may 

 sec dozens flying about everywhere in the open 

 air. Farmers wlio have lost thousands of dol- 

 lars worth of corn and grain through the rav- 

 ages of the Chinch Bug, can scai'cely ever fell a 

 Chim-li Bug when they see it iu a collectiou of 

 insects. And nuany otherwise well-informed men 

 are so blind to what is passing under tlieir very 

 noses everyday of their lipes, that they are not 

 aware that every fly that Goi ever made has got 

 exactly six legs, nevermore and never less ; and 

 will inform you, by way of describing any par- 

 ticnhir species that (hey wish to identify, out of 

 Ilic tluiusands of different species of flics that 

 arc found in (he United States, that it is re- 

 mai-kable for having six legs ! They might just 

 as well, by way of putting a detective on the 

 track of some thief that had stolen tlicir horses, 

 gravely tell that ofliecr, that they were ((uite 

 certain that the guilty person had a head upon 

 his shoulders, and had got two arms and two 



But it is not only so far as regards insects that 

 people usually keep their eyes diligently shut. 

 They do (he very same (hingwith the larger an- 

 invils. and e\'eii with that paiMiciilar one which 

 is more cspei-ially tlir peculiar favorite, of man- 

 kind — the Horse. Everybody is supposed to 

 have seen ahorse gallop time and again. Paint- 

 ers, engravers, and artists of all kinds, whose 

 special business it ought to be to copy correctly 

 from nature, are supposed to have seen thou- 

 sands of horses gallop. And yet, out of thou- 

 sands of difl'erent pictures and engravings, that 

 we have examined in the course of a reasonably 

 long life, all of them evidently intended to de- 

 lineate one or more horses at full gallop, not a 

 single one represents the legs in the natural and 

 normal position, that is necessarily assumed by 

 the galloping horse. Nay, farther. Every such 

 picture and engraving places the legs in such an 

 unnatiual and impossible attitude, that, if it 

 wrvr ;i--ui:i mI lor one single second, it would in- 

 cvita!i!\ (■ iii-i- the animal to fall to the ground 

 like a sack of wheat. This assertion will per- 

 haps astound the reader; but we think that we 

 can demonstrate the truth of what we assert. 

 And even if the mind fails to recognize the valid- 

 i(y of our arguments, let but the eye be for once ' 



opened, when the next runaway team passes 

 along the street, and it will then be found that 

 " seeing is believing." The chief trouble is 

 that most people will persist in resolutely keep- 

 ing their eyes shut, from the time that they get 

 up in the morning to the time that they go to 

 bed at night. 



AVhen a horse gallops, he " leads,'' as (he jock- 

 eys call it, at discretion either with the right or 

 with the left front leg. if he " leads " with the 

 right front leg, that Icg.when the animal is begin- 

 ning to come to the earth after his leap through 

 the air, touches the ground lirst. Immediately 

 afterwards the loft front leg and the right hind 

 leg touch the earth simultaneously; and then in 

 very quick succession the left hind leg. If, on 

 the other hand, the horse -'leads " with the left 

 frout leg, the only dilFcrence in the above oper- 

 .ation is, that "left" is throughout to be substi- 

 tuted for "right," and the reverse. The ca. 

 dence made by this peculiar foot-fall is well 

 represented to the ear by the words "Potato, 

 potato, potato," etc., so familiar to every horse- 

 man. And nearly two thousand years ago the 

 Koman poet Virgil, imitated to perfection this 

 peculiar cadence, by the sonorous mimicry of 

 the often-quoted line 



" Qundrupedantc putrom soiiitu (]untit un;;ula caniitmn." 



The sound, but not the sense of which may 

 be faithfully translated \>y the words 



Gallop, and gallop, aud gallop, and gallop, and gallop, and gallop. 



Now, at the time that each leg strikes tlie 

 earth, it is necessarily, iu order to take its 

 due share in elevating and propelling forwards 

 the l)ody for a fresh stride, thrown forwaf-dx; 

 for if it was thrown backwards at the moment 

 when it touched thi earth, it would be power- 

 less for any such purpose. Consequently, u.s 

 all the four legs strike tiie earth nearly at the 

 same moment of time, they are all thrown for- 

 wards nearly at the same moment of time ; and 

 when they leave the earth, after taking another 

 stride in that succession of leaps through the 

 air which we call a "gallop," they are all 

 thrown backwards nearly at the same moment 

 of time. And yet — strange to say — all (he gal- 

 loping horses, that wc see in pictures, have the 

 two front legs thrown forwards and the two 

 hind legs thrown backwards ! Whereas in re- 

 ality, as stated above, one front leg and one 

 hind leg move forwards simuKaneously and 

 move backwards simultaneously, and the other 

 two legs respectively precede and follow those 

 movements by so very short an interval, that 

 for all practical purposes all four legs may be 

 said to move forwards together and to move 

 backwards together. 



