Page:Equitation.djvu/227

 THE name, "High School" has long been used and is still employed to designate a system of education which trains a horse to execute in the ring of a circus the low and high airs and the various figures of manege. It is a special kind of equitation, for which the state of equilibrium is not important. Baucher, Fillis, Franconi, and other civilian masters of the art have exhibited their horses in the circus, not alone for the immediate financial profit, but still more to make their systems known and appreciated. It was, in fact, from the circus that Baucher and Fillis were called by various European governments to teach their systems to army officers.

These masters, however, had already accepted the anatomical principles of Benton, Borelli, and Bishop, who, in their discussion of animal motion, emphasize the fact that, at walk and trot, the horse advances by the diagonal movement of its limbs. But in accepting this doctrine of locomotion, these masters at once comprehended that the lateral or direct effects of the two older schools are in flat contradiction to the newer ideas of horse anatomy. They found it necessary, therefore, to