LECTURES ON HORSES. 
464 
of the limbs is easily kept in motion. The knowledge of this fact 
constitutes the basis of the wager so commonly offered by con- 
noisseurs, that a man shall run 50 yards before a horse can gallop 
100. Were the race prolonged to 150 yards, the man would find 
he stood not the slightest chance of winning it. 
French equestrians distinguish three kinds or gradations of 
gallop : — 1. The ordinary or hunting gallop, or the gallop with 
three beats ; 2. The manage gallop, or the gallop with four beats ; 
3. The racing gallop. The first and third of these accord with 
our own practical notions of the pace, but the second can mean no 
more than our canter : though where to draw the precise lines be- 
tween the canter and what we call the hand gallop, and between 
the hand and the hunting gallop, or between the latter and the 
gallop of full speed, may prove more than any of us are able 
satisfactorily to do. There is, certainly, a wide difference between 
the paces of canter and gallop ; but to say with precision where 
one ends and the other begins — whether the canter ought not to 
exceed six or seven miles in an hour, or whether it ought to 
amount, as others think, to eight or nine miles in the time, are 
points too knotty for me, as a veterinarian, to unravel. Neither 
is it easy to determine whether Lecoq is right or wrong in pro- 
nouncing there are but three instead of four beats to be heard in 
the ordinary gallop ; though I hesitate not to think he is in error 
when he says, that the gallop of speed is a pace by itself in which 
the body is transported through a succession of leaps. Mr. Blaine, 
indeed, notwithstanding he pronounces the gallop of speed to con- 
sist in a repetition of leaps, refuses assent to the doctrine of 
“ foreign manege masters,” that “ all the gallops are distinct paces. 
On the contrary,” says he, “ I think them all constructed of one 
and the same action ; of which a sufficient proof presents itself in 
the certainty that the horse can change from either of the gallops 
into the other without art, without alteration of his centre of motion 
or equipoise, or without interrupting the harmony of the moving 
members, but merely by an increased or diminished effort of the 
same action.” 
Lecoq presents us with an interesting analysis — a thing difficult 
in practice to obtain — of what he regards as the veritable, the 
ordinary gallop. In a complete stride or step, “ the body is sup- 
ported, 1st, upon one hind foot; 2dly, upon two diagonal feet; 
3dly, upon one fore foot; 4thly, it is without support — in the air.” 
“ And this succession of tread is so conducted,” adds Lecoq, “ that 
the prints made by the two diagonal feet appear in advance of 
those of the opponent diagonal feet: the horse being said to 
gallop with the right or with the left leg, according as the right 
lateral biped or the left take the lead.” 
