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The horse employs his tongue as a defence against the bit, passively as a cushion to protect the more tender parts on which the bit is intended to work, and actively he uses the muscles of the tongue, in resistance to it: this may be proved by using a straight mouthpiece, or one arched upward or downward, but without a porte. From under these a horse will never withdraw his tongue, and he will go with a dead bearing on the hand, though equal, that is, not more on one side of the mouth than on the other. Even a very narrow porte, not a quarter the width of the tongue, will suffice, when pressure is used, to defeat this defence, and completely to engage the tongue within the porte. But being then much compressed, it will sustain a great part of the leverage, and the horse will endeavour still more to make his tongue the fulcrum of the bit, and to relieve his bars from that office, by protruding his tongue, and thus forcing the thick part of it within the porte. If the porte is made wide so as to allow space for the tongue, the corners formed by the porte and the cannons (those parts between the porte and the branches) are apt to work injuriously against the bars, and also to slip quite off them, which makes the action of such bits uncertain, though they are very effective and severe if the mouthpiece is no wider than the horse’s mouth. But the mouthpiece which gives complete room for the tongue, and yet brings the cannons into perfect contact with the bars, is that of which M. de Solleysell claims the invention, and which he describes as “
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