the more energetic the subsequent defence. If the horse is soft, he will lean against the spur ; but if he is impetuous, he will immediately make a most violent defence, and the breaking will have failed in every way. Some animals will become restive, others will become maddened at the mere approach of the leg, and the breaker, instead of having taught anything, will have rendered education impossible.

It is always thus in breaking, the great difficulty being to make the horse understand what we want him to do. As we can appeal only to his memory,^[1] the means which we employ with him should be simple, and should be invariably the same.

In riding, the horse ought to be taught to understand that the spur is simply an " aid," and that it becomes a punishment only when he plays up.^[2]

Many persons who have only a superficial knowledge of equitation imagine that, instead of touching the horse behind the girths with the spur, it is more rational to keep the knee tightly pressed against the flap of the saddle, and by drawing back the heel to spur the horse on the side. Nothing can be more faulty than this method, by which the spur slides along a large extent of the side. By it we succeed only in tickling the animal and provoking him to defend himself, and we are unable to spur him with sufficient power to drive him forward and to paralyse his defence. The further back the