LECTURES ON HOUSES. 
403 
this flying or swinging trot, as it is called — -becomes rather an arti- 
ficial than a natural pace. By all horses it is not acquirable : some 
seem formed by nature to take it ; others, by dint of practice and 
perseverance on the part of their riders, get a knack of it ; others 
there are that cannot by any means, harsh or mild, be made to per- 
form it ; but in the effort are driven either into the butcher’s hitch 
or into the jumble of trotting before and galloping behind. Lecoq 
calls such horses foibles, weak; and it is not unlikely some of 
them are so, either from natural formation or in consequence of 
some inflexibility of the loins or hocks, &c. We are far from being 
able, however, at all times to say to what the incapacity is owing. 
Having considered the order of movement of the limbs in the 
trot, and made some allusion to the intervals of time consumed in 
grounding the feet and in making the necessary revolutions with 
them in the air, we come now to look at the relative positions they 
occupy in action, and see how it happens that they do not inter- 
fere one with another. In the slow or ordinary trot, the hind 
limbs are so carried underneath the body that their foot-marks fall 
near about those made by the corresponding fore feet : the fore foot 
has no sooner left its place of implantation than the hind foot occu- 
pies it. In the walk, the hind feet ordinarily in part cover the 
prints of the fore : as soon as the animal strikes into a trot, they 
quite cover these prints ; and as the speed increases their relative 
advance gradually becomes greater, until the hind overstep the 
fore feet, and would and must tread upon them, were it not that 
the former were advancing in different lines of direction from those 
in which the latter are stepping. Mostly, these lines are within 
the other ; the hind feet of a well-going horse treading (by turns) 
quite under the middle line of the body — that line along which the 
centre of gravity moves — and in this manner avoids collision with 
the fore feet : in some instances, however — in horses that “ go wide 
behind” — the hind feet are planted to the outer sides of the fore 
ones, and thus equally advance clear of them. There are instances 
or occasions where they take the same line of progression with the 
fore feet, and then collision is the inevitable consequence — over- 
reach as we term it. This, however, is a rare occurrence, save 
when the horse is thrown out of his natural action or forced beyond 
his ordinary effort by the injudicious or inhuman conduct of his 
rider or driver. 
I have shewn, in another place, that strength and flexibility of 
loin have much to do with speedy progression. According to the 
observations of Vincent and Goiffon*, the spine of the back grows 
incurvated during rapid trotting, the effect of which is to open the 
* As stated by Lecoq., Op. Cit., p. 385. 
