182 



THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



GOING IT BLIND. 



It is astonisliing- how the great majority of 

 inanicind go through the world with tlieir eyes 

 •shut. Scarcely a single day passes in the sum- 

 mer season, but some ingenious person or other 

 fetches us, as a groat and stupendous rarity, 

 some common butterfly or other, of which all 

 but those, who wilfully keep their eyes shut, may 

 see dozens flying about everywhere in the open 

 air. Farmers "who have lost thousands of dol- 

 lars worth of corn and grain through the rav- 

 ages of the Chinch Bug, can scarcely ever tell a 

 Chinch Bug when they see it in a collection of 

 insects. And many otherwise well-informed men 

 are so blind to what is passing under their very 

 noses everyday of their lives, that they are not 

 aware that every fly that Goi ever made has got 

 exactly six legs, never more and never less ; and 

 will inform j'ou, by way of describing any par- 

 ticular species that they wish to identify, out of 

 the thousands of diflerent species of flies that 

 are found in the United Slates, that it is re- 

 markable for having six legs! They might just 

 as well, by way of putting a detective on the 

 track of some thief that had stolen tlieir horses, 

 gravely tell that oflicor, that they were quite 

 certain that the guilty person had a head upon 

 his shoulders, and had got two arms and two 

 legs. 



But it is not only so far as regards insects that 

 people usually keep their eyes diligently shut. 

 They do the very same thing with the larger an- 

 imals, and even with that particular one which 

 is more especially the peculiar favorite of man- 

 kind — the Horse. Evei-ybody is supposed to 

 have seen ahorse gallop time and again. Paint- 

 ers, engravers, and artists of ail 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 different 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 

 unnatural and impossible attitude, that, if it 

 were assumed for one single second, it would in- 

 evitably cause 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- 

 ity 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. 



When a horse gallops, he " leads," as the jock- 

 eys call it, at discretion either with the right or 

 with the left front leg. If ho " leads " with the 

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

 ning to come to the earth after his leap through 

 the air, touches the ground first. Immediately 

 afterwards the left 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 

 front leg, the only difference iu the above oper- 

 ation is, that " loft" is throughout to be substi- 

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

 deuce made by this peculiar foot-fall is well 

 represented to the ear by the Avords "Potato, 

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

 man. And nearly two thousand years ago the 

 Roman poet Virgil, imitated to perfection this 

 peculiar catlence, by the sonorous mimicry of 

 the often-quoted line 



" Qiiadrupediintc putreiii soiiitii quatit migula canipuiii." 



The sound, but not the sense of which may 

 be faithfully translated by the words 



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



Now, at the time that each leg strikes the 

 earth, it is necessarily, in order to take its 

 due share in elevating and propelling forwards 

 the body for a fresh stride, thrown forwards; 

 for if it was thrown backwards at the moment 

 when it touched the earth, it would be power- 

 less for any such purpose. Consequently, as 

 all the four legs strike the 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 the gal- 

 loping horses, that we see in pictures, havothe 

 two front legs thi-own forwards and the two 

 hind legs thrown backwards ! Whereas iu re- 

 ality, as stated above, one front leg and one 

 hind leg move forwards .simultaneously 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. 



