It is the hind quarters which, by getting under the centre, bind themselves to the forehand.^[1] If all this propulsion was accumulated on the bars of the flexed and movable lower jaw^[2]—which should be connected to the entire forehand in such a way that the flexibility^[3] of the arm of the lever would be always increasing from the shoulders to the jaw—the hands, both in the changes of direction and in direct movements, would send back with extreme lightness^[4] to the legs, a part of the propulsion which they have received from them. We can thus make the entire body of the horse into an energetic and harmonious whole by the good equilibrium of the levers, and by the well-regulated use of the forces in changes of direction. We will thus obtain lightness, and will continue to have the horse in hand in all the changes of direction.

In the foregoing remarks I have described what I consider to be the nature and object of lateral flexion, and have tried, as in the description of direct flexion, to give reasons for my practice. Unfortunately the greater number of those who teach horses flexions, do the work in a hap-hazard way, without accurately understanding the nature of the result which they ought to try to obtain.

I must say that Baucher did not give a better account of the mechanism of lateral flexion, than he did of direct flexion. Or, rather, he committed the same fault in lateral