Horse collar of the Oseberg ship burial). The problem with a breastcollar harness was that the actual shafts of the cart, chariot, or other vehicle are attached to a surcingle around the barrel of the horse. The breastplate primarily kept the surcingle from slipping back, not as the primary pushing object. This results in the horse literally pulling the load, a less efficient use of the animal. The modern breastcollar has traces which transfer the pull directly from the breastcollar, but a horse collar still is more effective for pulling heavy loads. After the breastcollar harness, the next and final evolutionary stage
Matroid girth the use of girth in graph theory, meaning the length of the shortest cycle in a graph: the girth of a graphic matroid is the same as the girth of its underlying graph. The girth of other classes of matroids also corresponds to important combinatorial problems. For instance, the girth of a co-graphic matroid (or the cogirth of a graphic matroid) equals the edge connectivity of the underlying graph, the number of edges in a minimum cut of the graph. The girth of a transversal matroid gives the cardinality of a minimum Hall set in a bipartite graph: this is