SADDLES. 
459 
call on the road the “ check-rein ,which is applied to too free a 
worker. There is a temperance to be observed in every thing 
relating to the soul and body of man ;—in eating, in drinking, in 
knowledge, in religion—in all things in short; and in nothing more 
than in the application of the mental faculties. 
Nimrod. 
June 7, 1840. 
SADDLES. 
By Amicus. 
[We are acquainted with the name and address of the author of 
this pleasing yet erudite essay. Why are they withheld from 
the reader ] At all events, we shall be happy to hear from him 
again.— Edit.] _ 
In the early ages of the world, horses were ridden on the bare 
back; but, after a lapse of time, necessity, the mother of inven¬ 
tion, suggested the introduction of some kind of covering which 
should be placed upon the back of the animal. Pliny informs us, 
that one Pelethronius (of whom at this distant period nothing cer¬ 
tain is known) first introduced this practice—Lib. viii, c. 56. The 
coverings employed consisted of a piece of cloth, or a mattress, a 
piece of leather, or a sheep’s hide. A beautiful engraving of a 
more costly covering, which afterwards came into use, may be 
seen in that treasure of classical archaeology, by Montfaucon, en¬ 
titled L’Antiquite explique et re presentee en Figures.” 
These horse coverings were, however, by no means universally 
approved of, it being regarded as more manly to ride without 
them. Varro, who was born B.C. 118, boasted of his having 
ridden his horse, when he was young, without a covering; and 
Xenophon, who flourished about 430 B.C., reproached the Per¬ 
sians, because they placed more clothes on the backs of their 
horses than on their beds, and gave themselves more trouble to 
sit easily than to ride skilfully. Hippocrates, who lived about 
500 years B.C., observes, that the Scythians, who were much 
on horseback, were subject to sundry maladies in the hips and 
legs, from the want of some support for their feet. In the time of 
Alexander Severus, emperor of Rome, A.D. 220, the horses of 
the whole Roman cavalry had beautiful coverings. These were 
termed ephippium. 
The several parts of the saddles at present in use are too well 
known to require any minute description in this place. With re- 
