Horses in warfare of today's English saddle. Both the Scythians and Assyrians used pads with added felt attached with a surcingle or girth around the horse's barrel for increased security and comfort. Xenophon mentioned the use of a padded cloth on cavalry mounts as early as the 4th century BC. The saddle with a solid framework, or "tree", provided a bearing surface to protect the horse from the weight of the rider, but was not widespread until the 2nd century AD. However, it made a critical difference, as horses could carry more weight when distributed across a solid saddle tree. A solid tree,
Matroid girth spark of a matrix. The girth of a binary matroid gives the cardinality of a minimum even set, a subcollection of a family of sets that includes an even number of copies of each set element. Determining the girth of a binary matroid is NP-hard. Additionally, determining the girth of a linear matroid given by a matrix representing the matroid is W[1]-hard when parameterized by the girth or by the rank of the matroid, but fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by a combination of the rank and the size of the underlying field. For an arbitrary matroid, given by a independence