Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/312

298 would see a huge long wagon looming up so far behind the leader that one would hardly fancy there was any connexion between the two. Sometimes this economy is varied in a unique way. The stoutest horse is put into the shafts, and two spans are attached to him, with not only the long, wasting space between him and them and between each other longitudinally, but laterally; so that if the two horses thus spanned walk evenly abreast, they frequently walk four feet apart, or nearly enough asunder to admit a passing phaeton between them. In travelling through different parts of England I have noticed with much attention as well as curiosity this remarkable characteristic—this hereditary and voluntary service and adhesion to solidity. And I think any careful observer will come to the conclusion which I have formed, that the farmers of England waste full one-third of their horse-power; or one-sixth in the superfluous weight of their wagons, carts, and ploughs, and one-sixth in its application to them or to the load to be drawn. Often while watching one of these long, straggling string of horses drawing a wagon up a hill, with the leader full three rods from the forward axle. I have wished that the owner were obliged to take a few rudimental lessons in dynamics, that he might learn to be more merciful to his beasts. I hope it was not wrong to wish him