affection for the man, and for mankind
generally: fear and control being exchanged
for the confidence and fondling tricks of a pet
pony.

It must be particularly noticed, that the
horse is not pulled violently down; but
allowed and encouraged to exhaust himself
to that point, that when once down, he is
unwilling to rise. If he were pulled and held
down, no useful effect would be produced.
When down, the trainer handles him from
head to foot, coaxing and smoothing ears,
legs, quarters, belly, &c.; sits on every part
of him, and thus gives, without the slightest
danger or risk of resistance, a lesson that can
only be given on the old system after some
days of severe longeing, and even then with
doubtful results. Under the same
circumstances the saddle can be placed on the
colt's back while he is on the ground. The
straps confining his legs may then be
removed, the limbs stretched out to a natural
position, and again smoothed over; and, when
the animal has been made to rise, the saddle
may be replaced. It will be found that a
colt, wild from the hills, has lost all fear:
thus the greatest impediment to other lessons
is removed, and very frequently he will
follow the trainer about, just as a calf will
follow the man who feeds it from a pail.

It is not necessary to pursue the explanations
of the Rarey-system any further than
to state, that all the other operations of colt-
training are carried out by patiently and
frequently repeated short lessons for teaching
the animal what you want, and proving
that you do not mean to hurt it: always
taking the precaution, when needful, of
securing it by the strapping process from
hurting itself or you.

But as, according to an old, although often
very fallacious axiom, an ounce of fact is worth
a pound of theory (a theory, to be worth
anything, must be founded on a collection of
facts), we relate, in his own words, the
following practical experiment performed by
one of our oldest contributors:

In North Devon, the accounts of the
success of the Rarey-system of horse-training,
conveyed by the newspapers, had been
received with the incredulity, not to say
contempt, with which everything printed, and
not authenticated by some trusted local
name, is received in that primitive part
of England. On me, not only as pupil of
Rarey, and one, too, who had committed
himself to the soundness of the system in
print, but as a Londoner, venturing on an
equestrian experiment, no small amount of
provincial wit was expended by my hospitable
friends. For in North Devon, the opinions
and the prejudices of the Squire of Queen
Anne's days, as sketched by Macaulay in his
first volume of the History of England, still
prevail among the yeomen farmers and
sporting parsons, who handle the corkscrew
much more familiarly than the paper-knife:
one bottle of port, at least, they open daily,
but a new book, not being of local origin,
very rarely. The Londoner, therefore, who
does not appreciate a daily bottle, and rather
objects to brandy and water and tobacco in
the middle of the day, is set down, by a few of
the Devonian natives of the older formation,
as a sort of milksop, only fit to ride a donkey
and shoot at sparrows, although I strongly
suspect that had we some of these hard-
headed, loud-talking gentlemen on their cobs
in the Vale of Aylesbury, or the Harrow
country, we Londoners should make rather
an example of them.

North Devon is, therefore, one of the best
districts in England for putting the Rarey-
system of horse-training in practice; for, on
Exmoor and all the other minor moors, run
loose whole families of truly wild ponies and
Galloways, thorough-bred, half-bred, and pure
Exmoor, which, according to county tradition,
have their descent from the stock
imported by the Phœnician tin-miners.
Unrestrained by any visible bounds, they receive
no other care, from the time they are foaled
until they are wanted for work, than a little
hay in very severe winters, and the
occasional discipline of being chased back, when
they have strayed beyond parish bounds, by
the shouts and whip-crackings of two or
three mounted horsemen, quite as intent on
the fun of the chase as on the duty of
restoring the wild colts to their proper
pastures.

And so, amid much banter, it was settled
that a couple of colts should be driven from
the moors for the Londoner to try the new
system on. It was in vain that I protested
that it was my business to describe colt-
taming, not to tame colts—that I was "fat
and scant o' breath," and altogether out of
condition for attempting any experiments on
such wild specimens as I saw flying from us
whenever we rode out on Gorsemoor. The
fiat had gone forth. The parson, a
foxhunter; the local banker, another foxhunter;
the Great Man's agent, also a foxhunter;
and their wives and their daughters, had
been invited, while the squire, whose word
was law, in that parish at any rate, had
given orders that two colts were to be driven,
in from Gorsemoor, and a load of straw
shaken down in the winter-yard of his prize
heifers. Having never before tried my hand
on anything more wild than a cart-colt and
two or three perfectly-broken horses, and
being also painfully conscious that sedentary
summer labours had by no means prepared
me for such strong exercise as these wild
denizens of the hills seemed to promise, I
must confess I looked forward to the
exhibition before an assembly evidently prepared
to hail my failure with great satisfaction,
as a sort of triumph of country over town,
Protection over Free-Trade, and good old
Tory principles over modern abominable