LECTURES ON HORSES. 
462 
saddle are of a very different — very uneasy — kind, compared to 
such as he experiences during the act of galloping. This arises 
from two causes : — from the spring or movement of the body neces- 
sary to produce the leap being more forcible and sudden than that 
required for the gallop, and from the latter being created and con- 
tinued rather by the successive action of the two hind feet at one 
moment, and of that of the two fore feet at the next moment, 
than by the synchronous efforts of either biped, as happens in the 
leap. The two great propellers of the animal machine — the hind 
feet — are in the leap required to act simultaneously , to make one 
grand propulsory effort : not so in the gallop, that being a move- 
ment requiring maintaining, not by synchronous exhausting efforts 
of the hind feet, but in swift succession, first by one then by the 
other ; and the same as regards the office performed by the fore 
limbs ; which latter probably amounts to little more than the sus- 
tentation of the fore parts of the body. 
The vault into the air required for the leap is only to be effected 
by extraordinary subitaneous effort ; but the stride of the gallop, 
requiring frequent repetition, does not exact this effort — amounts, 
in fact, to no more than a sort of lift from the ground, multiplied 
into a reiteration of forcible heavings forward, maintaining, in- 
creasing, or diminishing the momentum of speed, effectuated by 
throwing the hind feet as far forward underneath the body as pos- 
sible, plunging them one after the other with inappreciable rapidity 
into the earth, and thus by two strenuous thrusts against the ground, 
one in aid of the other, working the animal machine onward in its 
fleet — almost flying course. In the gallop as in the trot, no sooner 
is a certain momentum acquired than by each successive propul- 
sion of the hind feet the body is sprung or lifted off the ground, 
flying, as it appears, in the air ; and the greater the speed the more 
this volitation becomes apparent ; hence the appellation given to 
the pace manifesting the utmost speed of FLYING GALLOP. Even 
this, however, according to my judgment, is an action different from 
leaping. When a horse leaps or jumps in his gallop — which he 
will do sometimes when he is beany , and has but just emerged out 
of his stable — he is said to buck, because his action then resembles 
that of the deer, in whom the gallop might with a great deal more 
propriety be called a succession of leaps : even the deer, however, 
cannot continue this bucking action after being driven into his 
speed or into a state of fatigue, shewing that in him it is to be re- 
garded rather as a gambol than as his proper working onward 
action. And that the hind and fore feet, in pairs, are not grounded 
synchronously, I think, admits of demonstration in two ways : — 
first, by the position they assume, one in advance of the other, in 
the gallop ; secondly, by the clatter the steps of a horse in a gallop 
