ON MAN AND ANIMALS. 
507 
Impressed with this verity, that exercise favours and preserves 
health, the primary condition of life, science has made it her 
business to study every possible movement of which the human 
orgasm is capable. Anatomists have succeeeded in decomposing, 
thus to express it, one by one, the actions performable by man 
and animals. Comparative anatomy points out to us the chief 
moving powers; it shews us how they co-operate in endless com- 
binations. And this analysis has enabled us to comprehend more 
perfectly, and, above all, more didactically, all those phenomena 
which more particularly constitute locomotion, the point we are 
principally aiming at in the present essay ; seeing that we have 
especially in view THE HORSE, whose whole value at the present 
day consists in the exercise or labour for which he is fitted. It will 
be our endeavour, gentlemen, to lay before you the phenomena of 
locomotion, methodically arranged, so that calculations may be 
better made of the cost of strength of each movement, and how the 
greatest effect is produced by it at the least possible expenditure. 
This it is that constitutes the calculated distribution of the strength 
of a horse : in a word, his equilibrium. Gymnastic is what brings 
man to this state of perfection ; equitation, the horse. 
Exercise is requisite for the production of a good and substantial 
breed of horses. Without labour — and that somewhat forced too — 
as well for breeding mares as for stallions, we can never breed 
stock for hard work, never produce a proper cavalry horse. From 
the day that the stud department accepted the English stallion, 
a horse that demands so much care, and who, under our ma- 
nagement, appeared more like a dog-horse than one fit for the pur- 
poses of reproduction, our stock, in former times no less steady at 
work than hardy, and which for a long time all Europe had been 
envious of, has visibly declined. Stallions the property of govern- 
ment are commonly more sterile than others, from the circumstance 
of their being deprived of exercise. Too much inaction extin- 
guishes the generative power. In this respect wild horses shew 
us an example worthy of imitation. And, besides, the powerful 
stallion has always an advantage over the weak one, for mares in a 
state of nature always give preference to the more active and vi- 
gorous ; the indolent stallion, without energy, being refused and fre- 
quently ill-treated by them. In a herd of wild horses the weakly 
cannot keep pace in their laborious courses with the stronger ; for 
while such amounts but to play, forced to stop for breath, the 
laggers-behind, dispersed and separated, become the prey of fero- 
cious beasts, or else succumb under an insalubrity of climate which 
their feeble constitutions are unable to resist. 
The domesticated horse has neither to fear the teeth of the wolf 
nor the inclemencies of seasons, and yet he is no longer the same 
