64 THE PROBLEM OF THE GALLOPING HORSE 



different times and in different parts of the world to repre- 

 sent the " galloping " of the horse have no correspon- 

 dence to any of the poses actually assumed by a galloping 

 horse as now demonstrated by instantaneous photography. 

 The " prancing " attitude of the horses of the frieze of the 

 Parthenon was probably not intended to represent rapid 

 movement at all. The " stretched leg " pose and the 

 " flexed leg " pose are, as a matter of fact, phases of " the 

 jump," and are definitely recorded in Muybridge's instan- 

 taneous photographs of the jumping horse, but have no 

 existence in " galloping " nor in any rapid running of the 

 horse. They were probably adopted by the artists of 

 Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and their successors in Europe as 

 an expedient without conviction, to represent rapid move- 

 ment, the true poses of which defied satisfactory reproduc- 

 tion. And it is also the fact that the " flying gallop," 

 which appeared in Mycenaean art thirty-seven centuries ago, 

 and then travelled by a " Scythian " route through Tartary 

 to China, and came back to Europe at the end of the 

 eighteenth century, is also — so far as it has any real 

 representative in the action of the horse — only approached 

 by a brief phase of the " jump." The poses of the horse 

 in jumping are shown in the small figures taken from 

 instantaneous photographs and reproduced in fig. 6 of 

 PI. III. The fine engraving from the Duke of Newcastle's 

 book, published in 1667, which is reproduced in PL IV, is 

 not an attempt to represent a horse galloping, but a correct 

 drawing of a horse " taking off" for a jump as seen in the 

 uppermost horse in PL III, fig. 6. " The picture given by 

 the Duke is 250 years old, but it is not an anticipation 

 of Stubbs' flying gallop, although the hind legs are repre- 

 sented with the hoofs turned upwards. It intentionally 

 represents (according to the text of the treatise in which 

 it was first published) a jump, not a gallop. The "flying 

 gallop " (" ventre a terre "), with all four legs stretched, and 



