Riding and Driving

CHAPTER II

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HORSE

It is a curious phase of the history of the horse in this country that the ancestors of the horse once lived in this country in large numbers, and then entirely disappeared. The ancestry of the horse has been traced back some three millions of years, and through that period practically every step of change, from the little five-toed whippetlike animal, to the Percheron or thoroughbred of to-day, can be illustrated by actual fossil remains.

The most complete collection of fossil remains of the horse, and the best illustrations of the different phases of his development, anywhere in the world, are in our Museum of Natural History in New York.

When the remains of the prehistoric horse were first discovered, so little was known on the subject, that the great naturalist, Richard Owen, called him the Hyracotherium or "Hyrax-like Beast," referring to the coney of Scripture, little suspecting that there had been discovered in this Hyracotherium the fossil remains of the horse of millions of years ago. In the Jardin d'Acclimatation in Paris there are two little horses at the present time each measuring under 24 inches at the withers.

This little animal was first provided with the flat, spreading, five-toed foot suitable to the low-lying and marshy land in which he lived. His teeth and mouth, and shorter neck and jaw, were adapted to the softer and more luxuriant herbage of that time and place.

As the water left the earth, this little animal gradually adapted himself to the harder ground, the less luxuriant vegetable growth and the necessities of the situation, which required that he should travel farther for his nourishment, and that he should travel faster, to escape his enemies.

Pounding along on the plateaux, which became his natural habitat, he lost one toe after another, first from his hind feet, because they do the most work in propelling him, and then from his front feet. His neck and jaw grew longer as he was obliged to reach lower and lower down to bite off the wiry grasses of the plain.

In short, the horse's foot and leg are developed from the short, slender leg and cushioned foot of, say, something resembling the foot and leg of a delicate-limbed tapir to its present form.

Compared with a man's hand, for example, the horse's knee is represented by the human wrist; the hairless spot of skin with its cushion beneath—fatty cushion of the fetlock—represents the prominence behind the root of each finger opposite the knuckles; and the hoof itself represents the nail of the middle finger of man.

299a

Intermediate stage in development of the horse, being about three feet high, and having three complete toes

299b

Showing long crowns of teeth

There are other patches of callous skin, sometimes called "chestnuts" or "mallenders," which appear; that on the fore leg is above the wrist joint or "knee," that on the hind leg below the ankle or "hock" joint. These, however, are still puzzles to the scientists, although in an old book on the horse, by Youatt, he speaks of them as diseases and prescribes remedies for their cure.

Huxley maintained that the theory of evolution pointed to the five-toed horse, and he stoutly insisted that the fossil remains of such an animal would some day be discovered, and sure enough we now have in New York City the fossil remains of these prehistoric horses, carrying out, even in minute detail, the steps of development he had outlined. There is the horse with four toes (Plate I.), then the horse with these toes grown shorter, until they hang above the ground, and finally disappear altogether.

Where the horse is left in a state of nature, free to choose the ground over which he will run, the hoof grows just in proportion as it is worn away, and maintains itself without artificial means, in perfect condition. On the other hand, where the horse is turned out on low-lying and moist land, his feet grow to great length. This is the case, for example, in the Falkland Islands, where the whole surface is soft, mossy bog-land; and here the horses' feet grow to be twelve and fourteen inches in length and curl up in various ways, so that the animals can hardly walk upon them. The nails on the fingers and toes of man, if not shortened by abrasion from rough, manual labor, or cut and filed artificially, will grow to great length, and as they grow, curl inward and around the tips of the fingers and toes, attempting to form, what the toe-nail of the horse has formed, a hoof.

Man himself, who has recently taken to walking in a proud manner, only upon his hind legs, reserving his fore legs for painting, writing, gesticulating, and feeding himself, is also gradually losing the toes off his hind feet,—in many persons the little toe being already almost nothing more than a short and useless stump.

When you run your fingers down the fore legs of a horse you may feel distinctly two of his toes tucked away under the skin, and now known as the "splint bones." Where horses are used continuously to work on hard roads, this toe-nail or hoof wears itself away faster than it grows, hence the necessity for shoes.

It is this evolution from a five, and then a four toed animal, to an animal that walks on the nail of the middle toe, which makes the legs and the feet of the horse such a very delicate and difficult problem to the horse owner (Plate II.).

It cannot fail to be of value and interest to every one who deals with horses to trace their development as they increase in stature, and in brain, and with greater and greater complexity of teeth; at the same time that the number of toes decreases, according to the law which rules that the fewer the toes, the greater the speed; the swiftest bird being the ostrich and the fastest mammal the horse (Plate III.).

The teeth of the earliest prehistoric horses were short-crowned and covered with low, rounded knobs of enamel, like the teeth of monkeys, or pigs, or other omnivorous animals, and entirely different from the grinders of the horse of to-day. Along with the development of the legs and feet of the horse, from an animal destined to live in marshy and forest ground, to an animal obliged to take care of itself in open, grassy plains, came a corresponding change in the teeth, from short-crowned, to long-crowned (Plate IV.), enabling the animal to live on the hard, dry grasses which require thorough mastication, before they are of use as nutritious food.

The teeth of the modern horse are, perhaps, the most perfect grinding battery that could be devised. There is an external layer of enamel, and a second inner ring of enamel around the pit of the tooth, and these grinding one upon and across the other, as the horse chews, make a most effective crusher and masticator of his food.

The incisor teeth of the horse have all the great peculiarity, not found in the teeth of any other mammal, and only in the Equidæ of comparatively recent geological periods, of an involution of the external surface of the tooth, by which what should properly be the apex, is carried deeply into the interior of the crown, forming a pit, the bottom of which becomes partially filled up with cement. As the tooth wears, the surface, besides the external enamel layer as in an ordinary, simple tooth, shows in addition a second inner ring of the same hard substance surrounding the pit, which, of course, adds greatly to the efficiency of the tooth as an organ for biting tough, fibrous substances. This pit, generally filled with particles of food, is conspicuous from its dark color, and constitutes the "mark" by which the age of the horse is judged, as, in consequence of its only extending to a certain depth in the crown, it becomes obliterated as the crown wears away, and then the tooth assumes the character of that of an ordinary incisor, consisting only of a core of dentine, surrounded by the external enamel layer. It is not quite so deep in the lower as in the upper teeth.

Between the canines and premolars is a space called the "bars" of a horse's mouth. It is here that the bit is placed, and not a few horsemen believe that this space in the horse's mouth has been gradually worn away by the use of bits until now it has become a regular bit-socket produced by the constant use of the horse by man. This is only one of the many absurd beliefs of the equinely wise in their generation. This space is no doubt the result of the lengthening of the jaw and head of the horse to reach his food. As his legs grew longer, placing him farther and farther above the ground, his neck grew longer and his jaw lengthened, and lengthened at a place where the grinding muscles would not interfere. The incisor teeth, three below and three above, developed more and more into effective nippers, and the premolars and molars into grinders of the most delicately complicated and complete kind.

It must not be supposed that this outline of the evolution of the horse is part patchwork and part surmise. On the contrary, the history of the evolution of the horse is the best-known illustration—and has been worked out with greater detail and success than any other example—of the doctrine of evolution by natural selection and adaptation to environment. "The skull of a man and the skull of a horse are composed of exactly the same number of bones, having the same general arrangement and relation to each other. Not only the individual bones, but every ridge and surface for the attachment of muscles and every hole for the passage of artery or nerve seen in one, can be traced in the other." The difference is mainly in this: in man the brain-case is very large and the face relatively of very small proportions; while in the horse the brain is very much reduced, and the face, especially the mouth, of great size. One can readily recall types of both animals where these differences sink to insignificance.

Even the man who is least interested in the ancestry of the horse cannot fail to see that the horse of to-day is the result of thousands of years of adaptation to his environment. His legs grew longer that he might go faster; his feet grew harder and encased themselves in a hoof; his head and neck grew longer that he might the more easily get his natural food; his teeth adapted themselves to the nipping, grinding, and mastication of that food; his bones, muscles, intestines, lungs, stomach, and general conformation inside and out, developed along the lines that have brought him to the point where he is far and away man's most useful sidepartner amongst all animals.

These matters are worth keeping in mind when you look over a horse with a view to his purchase. So far as your purse permits, you want the horse best adapted to your requirements. As you look him over, you have at least an intelligent notion of what you may expect from his past history and the points of the animal which indicate that he will bear out those expectations.

Let us suppose you want a harness horse for all-round work, one that will go single, double, or in a makeshift four. It is not required that he trot in 2.10, nor that he be able to be one of four to pull a loaded coach ten miles an hour.

First of all, he must see. Next he must have legs and feet to go on. Then he must have room for a furnace inside of him, to furnish the propelling force for those legs; and the more intelligence he has, and the more good-natured he appears, the better. Later, some of the more prominent good points and bad points of the horse will be noticed in detail, but it is as well to say at the start that the horse-dealer, or your most horsy friend, or the veterinary, avail little to find you the perfect horse.

All that reading, study, and experience can do is to avoid the worst faults, to keep in mind the salient good points, and then to make the very most of your purchase by care and training after he is your property. You may learn the good and bad points of a horse by heart and be as a babe in the hands of a clever horse-seller, whether he be professional or amateur. He knows the weaknesses, and also the good points, of what he has to sell, and you do not; and there are very few Launcelots in the horse business. We have all bought horses of a shrewd dealer and sold them again for five times what we paid; we have also bought horses and gladly disposed of them for one-fifth of the purchase price.

The main trouble in the whole matter is that buying and selling horses is looked upon by many people as either necromancy or thievery. It is neither. Study, intelligence, and experience are as necessary and as valuable in choosing a horse as in any other department of life, and in the end are just as valuable. Art critics have been fooled; book-worms have been deceived; lovers have been disappointed; financiers have gone into bankruptcy; educated men have been failures; but study, intelligence, and experience still rank high, none the less. It is possible that in this matter of choosing a horse the aleatory instinct in man comes to the fore and he is apt to think luck plays too great a part, but, aside from that, much the same qualities succeed here as elsewhere.

CHAPTER III

THE EARLY DAYS OF THE HORSE IN AMERICA

Why the horse, the fossil remains of which are found so abundantly in the middle West of this country that these places are known in the Scientific world as "Equus Beds," became extinct, there being no horses here at the time of the Spanish Conquest, is a mystery.

It is the more remarkable, for when the horse was introduced here and ran wild in South America and Texas, he increased and multiplied rapidly, showing that the climate, food, and general conditions were exceptionally well adapted to him.

Various animals have been used as beasts of burden, and even as cavalry, all over the world. In the old days of Cape Town, the Hottentots broke their oxen to the saddle and used them even for cavalry purposes in time of war.

In a report of the Treasurer-general of Peru, written in 1544, it is stated that the Spaniards even in those days used the large sheep or llama of that country both as beasts of burden and to ride.

The first importation of horses into the new world, credited by authentic history, was made by Columbus in 1493, when he landed in what is now known as San Domingo with seventeen vessels.

When Cortes landed at what is now known as Vera Cruz, having sailed thither from Cuba, he had with him the first horses that any man had ever seen in the Western hemisphere, and this was in 1519. The Indians thought these visitors were from the sun, and that the horses were fabulous creatures of incomparable prowess, and brought offerings of bread and flesh to them.

Later, in the bloody wars of Mexico and Peru, the war-horses, whose riders were slain, escaped and reproduced themselves rapidly in the great and luxurious plains, well provided with food and water and in a climate especially suited to them.

De Soto had horsemen with him on his expedition when he discovered the Mississippi River, and doubtless many of the horses were left behind to run wild when the survivors of that disastrous expedition, without their leader, returned in rough boats and rafts.

It is thought by some investigators that the horses found by Cabot in La Plata in 1530 could not have been imported, but this is highly improbable. There is practically no doubt but that the wild horse of America is a direct descendant of the Spanish horse, and therefore of the selfsame blood, which later made the thoroughbred in England, and the trotter in the United States, the fleetest and most valuable of their race.

The first importation of horses into what is now the United States was in 1527 by Cabeza de Vaca; these, forty-two in number, were brought to Florida, but through accident, disease, and ill-usage, all of them died.

The next importation was by De Soto from Spain, and these no doubt were the progenitors of our wild horses of the West and Southwest.

In 1625, the Honorable Pieter Evertsen Hueft agreed to ship, and did ship, to Manhattan Island, one hundred head of cattle, including a certain number of stallions and mares. These horses were of the Flanders breed, from which descended the Conestoga horse, afterwards justly prized in Pennsylvania.

The first horses came to Massachusetts probably in 1629. At any rate, we know that Governor Winthrop, writing on board the Arabella, at Cowes, March 28, 1630, says: "We are in all our eleven ships about seven hundred persons and 240 cows and about sixty horses."

English horses were landed at Jamestown, Virginia, as early as 1609, and there is a tradition that the first horse to land in Canada was brought to Tadousac in 1647.

As early as 1641-2 we read of horses and carts crossing Boston harbor on the ice, so severe was the winter of that year. In 1636, when the Reverend Thomas Hooker and his followers left the colony to found Hartford, Mrs. Hooker, so a letter of that date reads, was carried in a horse-litter. But the diligence and care of these first settlers in New England is nowhere more clearly shown, than by the fact that already, in 1640, Governor Winthrop writes of shipping eighty horses from Boston to the Barbadoes. Hardly had they imported horses for themselves before they were breeding them and shipping them to other parts of the world.

These horses were not of very valuable stock. As early as 1650 a young mare with her second or third foal was valued at about $60; a five or six year old stallion at about $55—this in Manhattan. In New England, where cattle were especially abundant, horses were worth about one-third less.

This is accounted for by the fact that horses in England even as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century were held in low esteem at home, where they were valued at about fifty shillings each. The better class of horses in England at this time were brought from Barbary or from Flanders. The well-known saying, "The gray mare is the better horse," arose from the recognized superiority of the gray mares from Flanders over the English horses of that date.

Even as late as 1700, dogs harnessed to small trucks did most of the teaming in the narrow and badly paved streets of the English towns, and were by no means uncommon in London for many years after that time.

One may judge of the condition of the roads, and the difficulties of transportation, by the charges. Seven pounds sterling a ton was charged for transportation from London to Birmingham; and twelve pounds sterling a ton from London to Exeter. Coal in those days was unknown except in the districts where it was mined, owing to the fact that the transportation of coal over the roads as they then were in England, would have made the price prohibitive.

The demand for the better class of horses in England at the time of the earlier importations of these animals to America, was mainly for the army, and for heavy horses to pull the carriages and heavy travelling coaches of the nobility and gentry. Such horses as were needed for these purposes were pretty generally imported from Barbary and Arabia, and from Flanders.

There seems to have been, however, a native horse in Great Britain; for Cæsar notes the fact that the Britons drove war-chariots.

William the Conqueror, who represents to England genealogically what the Mayflower represents to America, gave to a certain Simon St. Liz, a Norman friend of his, the entire town of Northampton and the whole hundred of Falkley, then valued at £40 a year, "to provide shoes for his horses."

From 1066 to the close of the twelfth century there was renewal and improvement of the British horse by importations from the continent, and also by stray animals brought back by the Crusaders under Richard and others; but such improvements of the native breed as these importations imply were of small importance, and without system or aim of any kind.

During the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, important legislation looking to the care and breeding of horses was passed, and when James I., who was fond of racing, came to the throne, he bought from a Mr. Markham an Arabian stallion, afterwards always known as the "Markham Arabian," paying for him what was for those days the extravagant amount of five hundred guineas.

This purchase by King James marks the beginning of high-class breeding in England. From then on, down through the reigns of Charles I., Charles II., and William III., not to mention Oliver Cromwell who raced horses with the same enthusiasm that he sang psalms, many horses were imported, much interest was taken in racing and breeding, and for the last three hundred years, from 1603, when James came to the throne, till now, England has been the home of, probably, the best horses in the world, and nothing pleases her people as a whole more than to have the reigning sovereign win the Derby.

The first volume of the English Stud Book, then known as the "Match Book," was published in 1808, and from then on we have had a more or less orderly sequence of breeding history, and the English thoroughbred race-horse, the progenitor at one time or another of the best types of horses in this country, became a recognized standard of horse.

Our own horse history may be said to begin at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Treaty of Peace with Great Britain was signed in Paris, July 3, 1783, and the British troops left November 25. The population of the United States at that time was less than four millions, about the number of people settled in and around New York City to-day.

The carriage roads of Boston were unpaved; and marked off by a line of posts and gutters, and laid with ill-assorted pebbles. The horseman who rode too fast over these pebbles, and thus threatened their disarrangement, was fined three shillings and fourpence.

The mail was carried between Boston and New York thrice a week in summer, and twice a week in winter, taking six days in summer and often nine days in winter, and all carried in one pair of saddle-bags. The post-riders knitted mittens and stockings as their horses jogged along over the well-known roads.

The very first coach and four in New England began running in 1744, and the first coach and four between New York and Philadelphia, the two most populous cities in the colonies, was put on in 1756 and accomplished the journey in three days.

Two stages and twelve horses carried all the goods and passengers between New York and Boston, doing forty miles a day in summer, and scarce twenty-five miles a day in winter. Josiah Quincy, writing at this time, tells us that he once spent thirty days in his own coach going from Boston to Washington.

The streets of New York were so badly paved that Benjamin Franklin was wont to say that you could distinguish a New York man in Philadelphia by the awkward way in which he shuffled over the smoother pavements of the latter city.

There were but three roads out of New York in those days: the Knightsbridge road, a continuation of the Bowery Lane, which went to Knightsbridge and thence along the river to Albany; the old Boston post-road, which started from the neighborhood of what is now Madison Square, thence to Harlem, and then east toward Boston; and the so-called middle road, direct to Harlem.

In the southernmost states there were no public conveyances of any kind except a stage-coach between Charleston and Savannah.

It is only one hundred years ago, only the span of two lives, and the population has grown from four millions to eighty millions; the gross receipts from postage from $320,000 (the gross receipts for the year ending October 1, 1801) to over $121,000,000 in 1902. The total estimate for the expenses of the city of New York in 1800 was for $130,000.

These were the days when the fashionable assemblies were advertised to "open with a Passe-Pie and end with the Sarabund à l'Espagnole"; days when eight bags of cotton were seized by the officers of the customs in England, because it was claimed no such enormous amount of cotton could have come from America; days when, so writes Josiah Quincy at any rate, the minister alone had white bread, "for brown bread gave him heart-burn, and he could not preach upon it;" and it was some fifty years later even than this, before we had the wheel-plough of iron, the reaper and binder, the drill, the hay-rake, and the corn-cutter.

There was little leisure, and little money to be devoted to sport of any kind, and the horse and the dog existed in New England, at least, in varieties little suited to sport.

In the South it was somewhat different. A jockey-club was organized in Charleston, South Carolina, as early as 1735, and there was horse-racing in Maryland, Virginia, and other Southern states for years before the Revolution.

In New England, on the contrary, racing was strictly forbidden on moral and religious grounds. No such thing as a running-race could be tolerated by the Puritans of that section. As a consequence of this, we may trace the pedigree of the American trotting-horse straight to Archbishop Laud, who having infuriated the Puritans to the point of desiring emigration for themselves and their families to the new world, they founded New England.

The scandalous levity and apparently papal leanings of Charles and Laud were not to be permitted for a moment in their new home, and pretty much all amusements were frowned upon. But the Cromwellian love of a fast horse survived in some of his fellow-Puritans living in New England, and men trained to the theological hair-splitting of that day made a distinction between horses trotting in friendly competition between church-members and horses running for money prizes!

"Thou shalt not covet, but tradition
Approves all forms of competition."

Two horses trotting down the streets of Hingham, Massachusetts, and one, perhaps, going a little faster than the other, would hardly lead even the godly Rev. Ebenezer Gay to suppose that he was looking on at the beginnings of the sport of trotting-races, and that a mare called Goldsmith Maid would win for her owners over $200,000 between 1866 and 1878 at this same sport. Strangely as it may read, there is little doubt but that Puritan principles or prejudices, as you please, gave the impetus to the development of the trotting-horse. Horses used for racing had always run, but when it was discovered that horses could also be raced at a trot, those that showed speed at this gait were used to breed from, and pains were taken to develop their speeding qualities. Hence it is not flippant humor that traces the trotting-horse back to Laud.

"Fast Trotting.—Yesterday afternoon the Haerlem race-course of one mile distance, was trotted around in two minutes and fifty-nine seconds by a horse called Yankey, from New Haven; a rate of speed, it is believed, never before excelled in this country, and fully equal to anything recorded in the English sporting calendars."—From the Connecticut Journal, June 19, 1806.

The first trotting-match of which there is any authentic account was in 1818, when Boston Blue was produced to win the wager, that no horse could trot a mile in three minutes, and won it; what the amount was is not stated. From that time on, trotting horses against one another and against time became a popular amusement. In 1834, Andrew Jackson trotted a mile in 2 minutes 42½ seconds; in 1858, Ethan Allen trotted a mile in 2 minutes 28 seconds; in 1859, Flora Temple trotted a mile in 2 minutes 19¾ seconds; in 1874, Mambrino Gift lowered the record to 2 minutes and 20 seconds; in 1874, the famous Goldsmith Maid trotted a mile in 2 minutes and 14 seconds.

In 1843 there were only two horses that could trot a mile under 2 minutes and 30 seconds; while in 1881 there were over twelve hundred horses with records of 2 minutes 30 seconds or better.

Trotting in those early days was mostly under saddle, and some of the races were even three miles in length. Since about 1850 trotting-races have been over a mile stretch, best three in five heats.

It is noted as a curious fact in the history of the trotting-horse that Messenger, who served a number of thoroughbred mares, served a far larger number of cold-blooded mares, and it was in these latter that the trotting instinct was almost invariably developed. This is repeated through the trotting register—almost no thoroughbreds have been trotting dams. Palo Alto is about the only half-breed that was a successful trotter, and one campaign finished him. Messenger was imported in 1792 and was at stud in New York and in Philadelphia for many years.

The first known importation of a thoroughbred to America was that of a horse called Bully Rock, by the Darley Arabian, out of a mare by the Byerly Turk, brought over to Virginia in 1730. A number of Derby winners were imported to America before 1800, including Diomed, the winner of the first Derby in 1780, Saltram, John Bull, Spread Eagle, Sir Harry, and others.

It must not be forgotten in dealing with the subject of driving that not only the history of the harness-horse in America is all very modern history, but that the condition of the roads and the state of the carriage-building trade prevented any great progress until lately.

Carriages, indeed, were hardly an ordinary article of manufacture until late in the reign of Charles II., or about 1675. It is maintained that a rough coach or wagon ran as a public conveyance between Edinburgh and Leith as early as 1610, but little is known on the subject. The in-little-things-omniscient Pepys writes in his diary under date of 1665 of springs on certain carriages. But coach and carriage-building had not progressed very far till later than this. The state coach of George III., 1762, weighed four tons, was 24 feet long, 8 feet 3 inches wide, 12 feet high, and had a pole 12 feet long. "Hansom's Patent Safety Cab" did not appear until 1834.

In the spring of 1669, a coach, described as the "Flying Coach," went from Oxford to London in one day, a distance now covered in an hour and three-quarters by rail. This Flying Coach departed on its first trip from Oxford surrounded by the dignitaries of the town and the university, and was welcomed in London by no less imposing official personages.

With this coach and others to follow, began all sorts of objections to conveyances going at this rate of speed. It was contended that they would spoil the roads, ruin the inns along the route by not stopping at them, and do great harm to the breed of horses by promoting speed at the expense of bone and weight.

It is curious to think that even the first mail-coach was criticised on much the same grounds as the first railroad trains. There was little danger either in England or in America of unduly fast travel with horses and vehicles in their then condition.

Even now in the United States the condition of the roads, except in and around the wealthier cities, is deplorable. In the last quarter of a century in this country we have built 132,865 miles of steam railway and we now have 203,133 miles of railroad. During the past fifteen years we have built some 23,000 miles of trolley road; we have spent in ten years $176,226,934 for the improvement of rivers and harbors, but for the inland farmer almost nothing has been done to give him good wagon roads. There are 74,097 miles of public highway in the state of New York alone.

It is calculated that $1.15 will haul a ton—

Five miles on a common road,
Twelve and one-half to fifteen miles on a well-made road,
Twenty-five miles on a trolley road,
Two hundred and fifty miles on a steam railway,
One thousand miles on a steamship.

France has 23,603 miles of wagon roads built and maintained by the government. Italy has some 5000 miles of road built and maintained by the government. Here in the United States, where more and more depends upon the ability of the farmers, small and large, to get their produce quickly and safely to market, nothing has been done as yet by the Federal government. It is worth knowing that a pair of horses drawing a load of 4000 pounds on a level road with a certain effort, can only draw with the same effort—

3600 pounds on a road with a grade of 1 foot rise in 100 feet,
3200 pounds on a road with a grade of 1 foot rise in 50 feet,
2880 pounds on a road with a grade of 1 foot rise in 40 feet,
2160 pounds on a road with a grade of 1 foot rise in 25 feet,
1600 pounds on a road with a grade of 1 foot rise in 20 feet.

It is worth knowing, too, that careful experiments prove that wide tires—3 to 4 inches—are lighter in their draught than narrow tires. That they are better for the road is very apparent. The wider tires act almost as a stonecrusher, and actually help to keep roads in repair.

In Austria, all wagons carrying a load of more than 2¼ tons are obliged by law to have wheels with rims 4⅓ inches wide.

In France, the tires of wheels on wagons used for carrying heavy loads are from 4 to 6 inches wide and some of them as much as 10 inches wide. In France, too, the rear axles on such wagons are made from 12 to 14 inches wider than the front axles, so that the rear wheels run outside the track of the front wheels, thus making a very effective road improver of every heavy wagon.

In Germany, the law requires that all wagons carrying heavy loads shall have tires to their wheels at least 4 inches wide.

It is now within the jurisdiction of boards of supervisors, in the state of New York at least, to enact laws regulating the width of tires on heavy wagons.

What good roads and wide tires and properly cared for and properly harnessed and handled horses would mean to us, in this, now the greatest agricultural and manufacturing country in the world, is almost beyond calculation.

326

CHAPTER IV

POINTS OF THE HORSE

Though you will probably never find just the horse you want for your particular purpose, that is no reason for not knowing something about the ideal horse.

There must be some intelligent and rational notions in regard to a horse if you are to choose one. It is better to know what one wants, and to keep it clear in mind, in this world, even if one never gets it. It is as sure as anything can be that the man who does not know what he wants will not get it.

Probably the best way to know a good horse is to study attentively a fine specimen of harness-horse (Plate IX.), polo pony (Plate VII.), saddle-horse (Plate VIII.), coach-horse, light-harness horse (Plate XIII.), children's pony (Plates XI., XII.), and carry the type in your mind's eye for reference (Plate XXX.).

A man learns to know a good book by years of intelligent study of good books; he comes to know a good picture by seeing the best pictures. The man who has seen champion Lord Lismore knows forever after what an Irish setter ought to look like; the man who has seen Pierre Lorillard's Geneva knows what a light-weight Llewellyn setter ought to look like.

No instrument has been invented which can teach a man to know a good book, a good picture, a good dog, a good horse, or a good woman. No such instrument will ever be invented, and that is what makes life so surprisingly unexpected, interesting, and exciting. We may deplore our ignorance, but it is precisely this which keeps us all alive.

To begin with, then, the head of the ideal horse should be lean, the skin fine, the bones prominent, the muscles well developed, showing the masticating apparatus in good working order. The space between the jaws underneath should be broad and well hollowed out There is a saying that a man should be able to put his clinched fist there, but such a test would require a very unhorsemanlike hand. Remember that a horse breathes through his nose, and that the air passages from nostrils to windpipe always must have space. The windpipe should be large and well defined in its detachment from the neck. It is preferable that his profile should be Grecian, or straight, rather than either concave or convex. He should be broad between the eyes for three reasons: first, because that forehead is the roof over the spaces through which he breathes; second, because to it are attached the muscles by which he opens and shuts his mouth; third, because this space also contains the brain. The eye should not be conspicuously small, denoting trickiness, nor unduly prominent, known among horsemen as the "buck eye," and often denoting defective vision. It should be set well up in the head, and when looked into should not show too much white, and should be clear. The eyelids should be thin and comparatively without wrinkles. The lips should be thin and flexible, and without undue length, either above or below.

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The ears should be lean, and the skin and hair on them fine. A quick, decisive movement of the ears gives an air of readiness and determination and usually implies those qualities. A lop-eared, hanging-lipped animal may turn out useful, just as men with faces like Socrates and Savonarola turned out to be saints; but in buying horses and trusting men it is better to go by general laws than by exceptions.

The head should be set on to the neck to give, what is very hard to describe, but easy to recognize, viz. an appearance as though the neck controlled the head, and not as though head and neck were all of one piece. At this juncture of head and neck the distance between the throat and poll should, as compared with the size of the neck elsewhere, be small.

The shoulders, not only for a saddle-horse, but for the harness-horse as well, should be sloping (Plate VIII.). Put a saddle on half a dozen different horses one after the other and note where the stirrup-leathers fall, i.e. how far behind the fore legs. If you have no other way of knowing whether the horse you are looking at has straight or oblique shoulders, this will tell you infallibly. Remember that about this question of shoulders, as about most other points of the horse, much nonsense is talked by the slovenly omniscient, of whom there is a multitude in the horse world. For though, as a rule, a horse can trot and gallop and walk with straight shoulders, he can do none of these exercises, except the last (that not fast) comfortably to himself with straight shoulders. Remember, in examining the shoulder of a horse, that there is the shoulder-blade and also the short bone (humerus) connecting the shoulder-blade with the upper bone of the leg. This shorter bone slopes backward and downward. The shoulder-blade is the better the more it slants, this shorter bone is the better the less it slants. A good horse, whether saddler, road-horse, or harness-horse, steps from the shoulder, not from the knee. Do not be deceived by the up-and-down action from the knee, which is often taken to mean free and high action. The contrary is true. Such a horse can travel all day on a tinplate.

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The ribs should be well rounded from above to below, should be definitely separated, and of full length. A horse with flat, short ribs near together must, anatomically, be lacking in power. The chest should be deep, but not excessively wide. The depth of the chest measured around should be large. When a horse is pointed out to you as being "well ribbed up," this does not mean that a line drawn from the bottom of his chest along his belly should slope abruptly upward like a greyhound; on the contrary, the loins and back, at the point slightly behind where the cantle of a saddle would come, should be broad, flat, and powerful-looking, and there should be no appearance of being tucked in, or tucked up, at the hinder end of the back and loins. A line drawn around the horse's body from the top of the withers to the elbow-joint, and from the point of the hip to the stifle-joint, would include between them where the horse lives, and this valuable space should be roomy and enclosed in muscular, but elastic, walls. If you put a tape around a well-developed and well-bred polo pony 14.2 in height, around his barrel just behind his fore legs, he will measure 66 to 68 inches; around his barrel just in front of his hind legs 61 to 63 inches. The same measurements for a well-bred horse 15.2 will be from 70 to 73 inches, and from 65 to 67 inches respectively. These are the proportions of an animal "well ribbed up" in the best sense. "Tucked up" or "tucked in" would mean that the measurements are smaller in proportion, behind. In looking over your prospective horse, therefore, see that his body be well rounded out not only in front but also behind, so that the last ribs look to be long, well rounded, and having but a small space—two or three fingers—between themselves and the point of the hip. Depth, shortness, and roundness of body are the essentials (Plate VII.).

As for the legs, the upper bone should be long in proportion to the lower or cannon-bone, and should be large and well supplied with muscle. The elbows should stand out far enough from the body to insure freedom of action. The knee should be wide from side to side, flat in front, and thick from before to behind. The leg just below the knee should not look disproportionately small, or "tied in" as it is called, but should be as large as other parts of the lower limb. The tendons that run down behind the cannon-bone should not adhere closely just below the knee. This bone (cannon-bone) between the knee and the fetlock should be short, straight, and strong. The fetlock—the upper and lower pastern bones—should be of moderate length and neither too sloping nor too straight. Out of a number of horses those with the best pasterns were those who stood the following simple test: Drop a line with a weight on it from the shoulder opposite the middle of the leg; in the case of the perfect pastern the line should end immediately behind the hoof. If the line drops in front of the heels of the hoof, the pastern is too straight; if behind, the pastern is too flexible.

The hoof of the horse corresponds to the claw or nail in other animals, and is made so that it forms a solid, tough, horny case around the expanded end of the toe. This non-sensitive substance renews itself from within as friction and work wear it away.

The feet of the horse should be moderately large, with the heels open and the frogs sound and with no sign of contraction. Big, spreading, awkward-looking feet mean weight to lift, coarse breeding, and usually a dull, heavy disposition. Smallish, round hoofs mean just the contrary.

Behind, the horse should have long and wide hips, with no appearance of raggedness, the stifle and thigh strong and long, and the hind quarters well let down, and not turned in nor turned out. The hind feet should be under the end of the croup, and the hocks and fetlocks should be a little back of a line dropped from the buttocks. The hock should have plenty of bone, be neatly outlined, wide, and thick. The bones below the hock should be flat, the tendons well developed and standing out from the bone, the feet and pasterns as in front.

The dock of the tail should be large and strong. Muscular development there, means proportionate strength all along the spine. The tail should be set on high, and be carried firmly and away from the quarters. A fat, awkward tail is a mark of poor breeding. The tail of the well-bred horse usually tapers off toward the end.

As a well-known Continental breaker and trainer of horses phrases it: "I like a handsome head, long and light neck, prominent withers, short and strong back and loins, long croup, long and oblique shoulders, close coupling between the point of the hip and the last rib, hocks well let down, short cannon-bones, long forearms, and the pasterns fairly long. A horse should be close to the ground, which he will be when the distance from the brisket to the ground will be equal to that from the withers to the brisket. A horse which is high off the ground is generally clumsy in his movements and liable to stumble." An old-time writer on the subject of the horse claims that a good horse should have: three qualities of a woman,—a broad breast, round hips, and a long mane; three of a lion,—countenance, courage, and fire; three of a bullock,—the eye, the nostrils, and the joints; three of a sheep,—the nose, gentleness, and patience; three of a mule,—strength, constancy, and foot; three of a deer,—head, legs, and short hair; three of a wolf,—throat, neck, and hearing; three of a fox,—ear, tail, and trot; three of a serpent,—memory, sight, and turning; and three of a hare or cat,—running, walking, and suppleness.

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Xenophon writes: "The neck should not be thrown out from the chest like a boar's, but like a cock's should rise straight up to the poll and be slim at the bend, while the head, though bony, should have but a small jaw. The neck would then protect the rider, and the eye see what lies before the feet."

One cannot go to buy a horse with a tape-measure, but certain proportions are well enough to keep in mind. The length of the head of a well-proportioned horse is almost equal to the distance: (1) from the top of the withers to the point of the shoulder; (2) from the lowest point of the back to the abdomen; (3) from the point of the stifle to the point of the hock; (4) from the point of the hock to the lower level of the hoof; (5) from the shoulder-blade to the point of the haunch. Two and a half times the length of the head gives: (1) the height of the withers and the height of the croup above the ground, and (2) very nearly the length from the point of the shoulder to the extreme of the buttock (Plate XVIII).

One should never judge a man or a horse by his defects and weaknesses, but rather by his strong points and his general proportions. Any political campaign will teach the absolute impossibility, not to say imbecility, of any or all the candidates; and yet one or another of them is fairly certain to give us a respectable government. Tammany has been known to elect an upright mayor; Reform has been known to elect a weak one. There have been trotters and runners of surprising records with numerous defects of build, and we all have one or more equine paragons in the stable that are for sale at a moderate price.

None the less, there are certain defects which should be constantly kept in mind. They are, beginning at the head: a coarse, heavy head, a thick, short neck, a small, sunken eye, a long back, a hollow back (though there have been good racers with sway-backs), flat sides, too much length between last rib and hind quarters (a mare, as compared with a horse, has, as a rule, a lighter neck, a broader pelvis, is higher behind and slacker in the loins), prominent and bony hips, low at the withers, a shallow chest, fore legs too close together and not straight, very straight or very bent pasterns and hocks, much split up between the quarters, tail put on too low and hanging close to the quarters, flat feet, over-big feet, contracted feet.

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Of the age of a horse, after eight years, only those who have given much time and study to the subject can determine anything very accurately. The receding of the gums and wear and tear of the teeth, of course, are indubitable signs of age. The lower jaw, too, as a horse advances in years, tends to bend outward, making an angle more and more acute rather than an obtuse angle. The cross-sections of the teeth, too, are smaller as the teeth grow up from the gums to supply the parts worn away. Up to the age of six years the age of the horse can be determined fairly accurately, but even then difference in food and care make a marked difference in the wear on the teeth.

The young foal has two and sometimes three temporary molars in each jaw (Plate V.). When about twelve months old another molar appears (Plate V.) which is permanent, and before the completion of the second year a fifth molar, also permanent, appears (Plate V.). Between the age of three and four the mouth is completed with twelve permanent molars in each jaw, or twenty-four in all (Plate V.). The incisors are six in number in each jaw when the mouth is complete, at the age of four. Just back of these, on each side, at the age of four appears a pointed tooth called a tusk (Plate VI.). These tusks are rarely found in mares. The lower jaw of a horse three years old is marked by two permanent teeth in the centre and two milk teeth on either side. Milk teeth are easily distinguished from permanent incisors by their smallness, whiteness, and their more distinct necks. At the age of four the lower jaw has four permanent and one milk tooth on either side. At the age of five there are six permanent teeth and no milk teeth. At the age of six there are six permanent teeth and the corner teeth are filled in the centre. At the age of seven the dark filling in the pit of the two centre teeth disappears (Plate VI.). At the age of eight (Plate VI.) the dark filling disappears from the four centre teeth, and at the age of nine these marks have generally disappeared from all the teeth (Plate VI.). For all practical purposes this measure of the age of the horse is accurate enough, though it is apparent that the nature of the food on which the horse is fed, whether it be hard or soft, makes a difference. Horses, for example, fed upon the fresh food of a farm will retain the marks in the teeth longer than horses grazing upon tough grass. As a rule, in examining a horse's mouth only the lower jaw is looked at. It is well to lift the lips above the upper incisors to see if they are unduly worn—a sure sign of "cribbing."

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What has been written thus far as to the points of the horse may puzzle the amateur owner, for the reason that these points seem to apply to all horses of whatever description. In proper proportions they do. It is only necessary to adapt these measurements and proportions to the kind of a horse we want, remembering always the well-known law, that muscles and bones of speed are long and slender, and those of strength are short and thick. A pony 14 hands 2 inches, capable of carrying 200 odd pounds, and a three-quarters bred polo pony of the same size, but wanted for speed and quickness, would naturally enough not look alike, but the general relation of the parts to one another would be the same; and in looking at one for a weight-carrier and at the other for speed, you should bear in your mind's eye the same distinct principles of what constitutes a good horse and what a bad one.

If you are looking for a horse for your runabout, or for a horse for a heavy station-wagon, one should be lighter, cleaner-built perhaps, quicker, and livelier than the other; but it is a grave mistake to suppose that the same remarks about head, neck, back, legs, feet, and so on do not apply with equal pertinency to the one as to the other. Remembering always that weight is of great help in pulling a load,—a horse with a heavy man on his back can pull a big load up a hill that without the weight on his back he could scarcely move,—the other general definitions of what constitute a good horse apply to all classes. A straight-shouldered horse is less noticeable and less uncomfortable in harness than under saddle; a slab-sided, ragged-hipped, goose-rumped animal well covered with heavy harness in a brougham is less offensive than under saddle, but such an one is a poor specimen wherever he is.

The ideal way, however, to cultivate an eye for a horse is to study his make-up externally and internally from the plates of the skeleton and the internal parts (Plates XVI. and XVII.); to bear in mind what his ancestry is; to note the relation of the parts to one another, and the position of his various organs; to study carefully the dispositions, abilities, strength, and weaknesses of the horses that you know well; and to come to your conclusions with this knowledge and experience in the back of your brain. To be able to gabble off the points of a horse memoriter avails about as much as to know the letters of the alphabet avails to write one of Rossetti's sonnets. Even then you will make mistakes; but to enjoy the sport of owning and using horses, either in harness or under saddle, one cannot know too much, either theoretically or practically.

Although this volume is included in a library on sport, it should never be forgotten that in dealing with every branch of sport, particularly where live animals are trained and used by the sportsman, a very serious ethical element enters. No man who knows nothing about horses, no matter how charitable he may be, no matter how ecclesiastically regular he may be, no matter how conspicuously tender-hearted he may be to children, insects, and the poor, has any business on a horse or behind a horse. First, because he is almost invariably cruel to the horse; and secondly, because he is endangering the lives of other people. How often I have seen Piety in the saddle, sawing the tender bars of the horse's mouth, and sliding back and forth from pommel to cantle of the saddle, excoriating the tender skin and flesh beneath. How often I have seen Philanthropy and Worth driving horses with cruel bearing-reins, traces too long, pole-straps too tight, coupling-reins of the same length for the long-necked and the short-necked horse, belly-band tight and girth loose, bit too wide, nose-band flapping up and down, and breeching too tight or too loose. Little did Philanthropy and Worth realize that these things were as uncomfortable to the horse as tight shoes, trousers too long, coats too small, collars too tight, and a toothache and headache to them. It is because sport has been handled in this country to such a large extent by the professional and by the uncultivated, that its prime value as a teacher of practical and economic morality has been overlooked.

Above all things, do not imagine that, because you own one or more horses and stroke their necks occasionally, that you know a horse when you see one. Such knowledge does not come by cutaneous friction nor by money. A wise man has three attributes always; he may have more, but he must have these: (1) he is never afraid to ask questions; (2) he is thankful for the many things he does not want; (3) he knows when he does not know things. Therefore, ask questions and make no pretence. The most ill-informed man I ever met is one who has never failed to answer every question asked him, and who never asks one himself. It is needless to say that he is a failure in his profession, a bore socially, and an encyclopædia of voluble misinformation.