HOW TO QUIET HORSES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 673, 12 March 1875, Page 3

HOW TO QUIET HORSES.

. _ o According to a discovery made by Professor Sbief of Florence—a discovery which lias been pushed beyond him by many others —it was found that it was quite enough to touch the nostrils of a horse, simply passing the fingers along the sides of his nose to stop the activity of his heart and respiration and to stop consciousness in a measure. He did not find, hut left another to find it, that interchange between the tissues and the blood is also stopped. It is well known now that most of those men who succeeded in quieting violent horses put their fingers to that part, and sometimes inside the nose. Merely touching these parts may produce the same effect; It is not essential that the application be made there, as a pressure of the lip may do the same tiling. In some animals —rabbits and guinea pigs—if we pass needles into their chest and heart, so as to judge of respiration and circulation, we find that we stop the circulation as we press the lips or part of the cheek. It is not that the poor creature is frightened, at when we derive them partially of their consciousness, as almost altogether, by the use of chloroform, the same phenomena occur. There is a very curious fact mentioned by Catlin, who travelled in the west, and wrote two volumes on the Indians. He states that the calves of the buffalo, if they are caught, and the air from the lungs of a man is strongly breathed into their nostrils will become so fascinated by that peculiar influence that they will run after the horse of the hunter, and follow him five or six' miles. It is said, and Mr Gatlin affirms It, that in Texas, or in other parts of the country where there are wild horses taken by the lasso, if the hunter, in taking bold of their nostrils, forcibly breathes into the nostrils of the horse, he will follow him and become perfectly tame.