Here the weight and the forces are equally distributed. By means of this just distribution the different positions, the different paces, and the equilibriums that belong to them, are obtained without effort on the part of man or horse.
Resuming what we have just explained in the case of a horse who rests his chin on his breast, we repeat that it is by producing one force from the rear to the front with the legs, and another from below upwards with the hand, that we will soon be enabled to improve the position and movements of the horse. So that whatever may be his disposition at first, it is by first causing the depression of the neck that we will quickly gain a masterly and perfect elevation of it.
I will close this chapter by some reflections on the supposed difference of sensibility in horses' mouths, and the kind of bit which ought to be used.
_Of the horse's mouth and the bit._--I have already treated this subject at length in my Comprehensive Dictionary of Equitation; but as in this work I make a complete exposition of my method, I think it necessary to repeat it in a few words.
I cannot imagine how people have been able so long to attribute to the mere difference of formation of the bars,[G] those contrary dispositions of horses which render them so light or so hard to the hand. How can we believe that, according as a horse has one or two lines of flesh, more or less, between the bit and the bone of the lower jaw, he should yield to the lightest impulse of the hand, or become unmanageable in spite of all the efforts of two vigorous arms? Nevertheless, it is from remaining in this inconceiveable error, that people have forged bits of so strange and various forms, real instruments of torture, the effect of which is to increase the difficulties they sought to remove.
[G] The bars are the continuations of the two bones of the lower jaw between the masticating and the front teeth. It is on these that the bit rests.
Had they gone back a little further to the source of the resistances, they would have discovered that this one, like all the rest, does not proceed from the difference of formation of a feeble organ, like the bars, but from a contraction communicated to the different parts of the body, and, above all, to the neck, by some serious fault of constitution. It is, then, in vain that we attach to the reins, and place in the horse's mouth a more or less murderous instrument; he will remain insensible to our efforts as long as we do not communicate suppleness to him, which alone can enable him to yield.