To pick a whip from the ground. To pick a whip from the ground, take the pummel with the right hand, place the side of the left foot against the girth, the toe between the horse’s elbows, bring the back of the right leg on to the top of the saddle, and let yourself down to the full stretch of your right arm; this is very easy at the halt, still easier on the move, if your horse is quiet. If you fail, you only dismount on your hands instead of your feet, which on turf may be done innocuously at a canter.
To face about in the saddle. To face about in the saddle place the palms of the hands on the pummel, throw your legs out horizontally over the horse’s croupe, turn and come into the saddle facing to the tail. If M. Cui Bono remarks that the last two feats are, like others which I might detail, useless, I answer, that the practice of no feat of activity or strength is useless. Activity and strength, the unctæ dona palæstræ, form a firm assurance against perils, not only to your own life but to the lives of others.
CHAPTER VII.
THE BIT.
Place of the bit in the mouth.—Principle of the bit.—Action of the common bit.—Action of the Chifney bit.—The loose eye.—The noseband.—The horse’s defence against the bit by the tongue.—Effect of the porte against this defence.—Defence by the lip.—Defence by the teeth.—Bar of the military and driving bit.—Martingale.—Danger does not result from power.
Place of bit in the mouth. To give the bit its most powerful action it should be placed so low as only just to clear the tusks in a horse’s mouth, and to be one inch above the corner teeth in a mare’s mouth. The curb-chain should be so tight as not to admit more than one finger freely between it and the chin; these rules are simple, and should be attended to by all riders; a horseman should no more mount with his bit improperly placed, than a seaman should set sail with his helm out of order.
Principle of the bit. A twitch round the lower jaw, under the tongue, on the bars or parts of the mouth bare of teeth, is perhaps the most certain, powerful, and severe instrument to hold a horse with, and it may be tightened till it becomes a dreadful implement of torture. Next to this is what is called the dealer’s halter, which is merely a narrow thong of leather in like manner tied round the lower jaw, under the tongue, but incapable of being tightened or slackened like the twitch. The bit is a most ingenious attempt to grasp the lower jaw by the same bare parts, with the capability of contracting or of perfectly relaxing the grasp, by the application or withdrawal of the powers of the lever. This is the intended action of the bit,—the philosopher’s stone,—after which all bit-projectors and bit-makers have laboured; the obstacles to be overcome are various and perhaps insuperable, and indeed could the powers of the lever be employed on such exquisitely sensitive parts as the bare jaws, when within this iron vice, perhaps no hand could be found sufficiently delicate to use them. By pressing your finger-nail against your own gums, you may form some idea of the agony such an implement would have the power of giving to a horse; anything approaching to harsh, hard, handling with it would drive him desperate, and force him to throw himself over backward; the idea of lifting his weight by such parts grasped with iron is absurd, still more preposterously barbarous that of arresting the headlong impetus of a falling horse by them. Fortunately the power of the rider is here very limited, and the horse defends himself against it by throwing his head upward and backward, and thus the rider only breaks his horse’s knees instead of his jaws.
Action of common bit. But a common bit placed in the common way never touches the horse’s bars at all, it is usually placed higher than as directed above, and, as it pivots on the eye (that part to which the headstall is attached) when in use, it rises in the horse’s mouth—higher directly as the length of the cheek (the upper part of the branch or side of the bit) and inside the mouth it has a mixed action, on the fleshy part of the gums above the bars, on the lips, and (owing to the narrowness of the porte) on the tongue. Outside the mouth, the bit acts on the coarse part of the two jawbones, above the fine part of the chin, where the two jawbones meet, where the curb-chain was originally placed, and where it should act; and I consider this sort of upward grating action as calculated to excite, rather than to restrain a horse. Action of a Chifney bit. A Chifney bit, as it pivots on the mouthpiece, avoids this; its action is quite independent of the headstall, and is precisely on the parts where it is originally placed.