to keep the horse, whether walking, trotting, or galloping, always with all four feet in the circular path, never letting the hind quarters stray inside or outside the fixed line. Evidently, in circling at the right hand, the partial flexion of the head to the right will tend to throw the haunches outside the true path, so that it requires a very accurate effect of the rider's outside leg to correct this fault to just the right degree. Moreover, the circle itself, throughout the movement, should remain of precisely the same size, in spite of the tendency to become smaller or larger.
THE VOLTE
The volte is a circular movement, executed in the manege or outside, in which the horse changes direction in three steps of one yard each, and in twelve steps completes the circle.
Before the days of the scientific equitation, the volte was asked at all three gaits by the lateral effects. The new equitation asks the volte at walk and trot by means of the diagonal effects, and only at the gallop by means of the lateral. In this, I am completely opposed to the principles of my predecessors, Baucher, Fillis, Anderson, and their contemporaries.
Consider, therefore, just what is involved in the execution of a volte, let us say to the right. The horse, in order to send its inert weight to the right while keeping the center of gravity at the middle
