94 
SHY HORSES. 
and familiarize them, retain in a greater or less degree throucrli 
life. 
Opposed to native or instinctive timidity, we may set ac¬ 
quired timidity, or that which is engendered by the remembrance 
of what has already, and probably more than once, been pro¬ 
ductive of pain or uneasiness of some kind, and hence given rise 
to shyness. To give a familiar illustration of these two divi¬ 
sions or (if they may be so distinguished) species of timidity—a 
horse is naturally shy at any object of imposing appearance 
either novel or strange to him ; or he may manifest the same 
feeling at beholding an object with which he is perfectly fami¬ 
liar; at least (to qualify our meaning here) he may evince as 
much unwillingness to approach a place or object which he as¬ 
sociates with some former suffering, as one he has never seen 
before. We do not mean to assert that these manifestations of 
fear are alike^ further than that they arise from the same impres¬ 
sions, a dread or consciousness of danger, in the one instance 
acquired, in the other ingenerate, and that they both are con¬ 
founded in what is vulgarly called a shy horse.’’ Let a horse 
be put up often and fed at any certain place on a road he is in 
the habit of going, and he will not afterwards pass the place 
without manifesting great inclination to stop there again; on 
the other hand, let a person stand concealed at some spot and 
not fail to spring forv/ard and whip or annoy the animal every 
time he passes, and never afterwards will he go by without look¬ 
ing earnestly and suspiciously towards the spot, and probably 
shying and starting from it altogether. 
There is yet another cause to which shyness is ascribable ; 
and that is imperfect vision. horse whose eyesight is defec¬ 
tive is apt to mistake one object for another, or he may not be 
able to see sufficiently to make the distinction until he has ap¬ 
proached very close to the object or he has put his nose to it: 
such an animal is nearly in the same predicament in which the 
unbroke colt is; either the object really is, or he fancies it is, 
