THE 
VETERINARIAN. 
YOL. XVII, No. 200. AUGUST 1844. New Series, No. 32. 
LECTURES ON HORSES. 
By William PerCIVALL, M.R.C.S., Veterinary Surgeon 
First Life Guards. 
THE GALLOP. 
A HORSE by nature walks, trots, and gallops ; and with these 
three paces his speed may be said to receive augmentations from 
the comparative slowness of the walk, until it arrives at the pro- 
verbial fleetness of the gallop : hence the word gallop , in a variety 
of figurative senses, is used to imply fast motion or great haste. 
Its literal meaning, as regards quadrupeds, is given in our diction- 
aries to be moving forwards by leaps ; and the animal in the act 
of galloping creates that motion in his body which certainly strikes 
the casual observer with the notion that he is making at the time 
a succession of jumps or leaps. Indeed, some equestrian writers 
have gone so far as to define the gallop of speed or racing gallop 
to be nothing more than a repetition of leaps. Mr. Blaine ob- 
serves, that “ as the two fore feet at once beat the ground together, 
and then the two hinder, so it is evident that the gallop of speed 
is nothing more than a repetition of leaps.” Lecoq likewise de- 
scribes the galop de course as consisting in une succession de sauts. 
In the face, however, of these worthy authorities, I must say that, 
to me, the gallop and the leap appear acts of a different nature, 
and consequently that we are in error when we say that the one is 
no more than a compound or repetition of the other. In galloping 
a horse — in hunting for example — the rider needs no person to 
tell him of the moment his horse is taking a leap, however 
trifling it may be : his own sensations inform him of every grip or 
furrow his horse leaps in his course, and should he have occasion 
to make a succession of such jumps, the rider’s sensations in his 
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