Excerpta.

Kaikoura Star, Volume XIV, Issue 735, 4 May 1894, Page 2

Excerpta.

Humouring the Horse.

Mr H. C. Merwin, in his ‘Road, Track, and Stable,’ says that the peculiar success of American horsetrainers is due chiefly to the fact that they have consulted the equine nature, and instead of subduing- the horse’s spirit have endeavoured to win his confidence. ‘ Instead of breaking colts,’ ‘we ‘gentle’ them.' He has seen a high spirited stallion, on the fourth occasion of its being in harness, going so kindly that the owner did not hesitate, to take his child of three years with him.

The case of Johnston, the famous pacer, illustrates what can be accompanied by bumourising the sensitive equine disposition.

‘ He was the most nervous horse that I ever saw,’ writes John Splan, his trainer and driver, ‘ and I found that in shipping him about from one track to another he became more nervous and irritable. If you left him alone in the stable he would tramp around like a wild animal, and get himself in a sweat. If anybody went into the stall next to him and began to hammer or make anything like a loud noise he would try to climb out of the window. Whenever a stranuer stepped into his stall he would give a snort and back into the farthest corner.’

With some difficulty Splan obtained the services of a quiet, faithful ‘ rubber,’ or groom, called Dave. Dave procured a dog as additional company for Johns’on, and these three remained inseparable through the period of Johnston’s training It was a matter of course that the groom should sleep in the stall, but he never left it, day or night, having all his meals brought there. Under this treatment Johnston rapidly improved. He became less nervous, ate better, and in the event lowered the pacing- record to 1.06;}, a mark which has not yet been surpassed upon a regulation track.

All the great trotters have had their grooms. Goldsmith Maid, like Johnston, had not only a groom—‘ Old Charlie,’ —but a dog. For five years Old Charlie was never absent from her stall except for two nights. ‘They were a great family,’ says Mr Doble, ‘that old mare, Old Charlie, and the dog apparently interested in nothing else in the world but themselves, and getting along- together as well us you could wish. When it was bedtime Charlie would lie down on his cot in one corner of the stall, his pillow being a bag containing the mare’s morning feed of oats ; the Maid would enscono herself in another corner, and somewhere else in the stall the dog would stretch himself out.’

‘ About five o’clock in the morning the Maid would get a little restleesand hungry. She knew well enough where the oats were, and would come over to where Charlie was sleeping and slick her nose under his head, and in this manner wake him and give notice that she wanted to be fed.’

Fire-resisting Glass.

An interesting test of fire-resisting ma'erials and construction wits recently carried out in Berlin, under the auspices of the fire brigade and the insurance companies of the city. The idea of the tests was mooted as far back as 1889; but there was considerable difficulty in arranging for a series of fires, which were intended to be as natural as possible and yet should not be dangerous. Finally, the municipality gave the experimenters the use of an old warehouse for their purpose, and this building having been fitted up to represent various types of fire-resist-ing structures, was duly set on fire. Care was taken to subject the exhibits to the temperatures, irregularities of heating, sudden shocks bv falling weights or jets of water, &c., which generally occur at conflagrations; and it was found possible to take fairly exact observations. Among the most

satisfactory results obtained were with the fire-resisting glass, made by Messrs Siemens, of Dresden. The assessors declare it to he most suitable for any window or skylight necessary in a division between separate risks, as it will resist a temperature of 1,300 degrees C for half an hour or more, beating all manner of shocks and strains without suffering appreciable damage. Care is required in fixing this glass, however, as the iron frames used for ihe purpose buckle under heat, and show, between the glass and iron, openings through which flame can pass. Some of the so-called fireproof doors, made of iron girders and concrete came to speedy grief in these teste; while iron and brick floors stood very well. As regards flreproof doors, nothing stood better than doubleoak, covered with thin sheet iron, between which and the wood there should be a layer of asbestos cloth.

Women and Waterloo.

In Mrs Newton Crossland’s ‘ Landmarks of a Literary Life,’ there are very interesting glimpses of the part women played before and after the great battle.

‘ In my early life I knew well a lady who happened to be in Brussels that memorable June. She was then newly married, and only three and twenty years of age. So little certain of victory did the English on the spot feel, that her husband insisted on her dressing like a Normandy peasant, thinking such a costume would be a protection. ‘ Vividly have I heard her describe the partings she witnessed at the door of the hotel she was staying, and the despair of wives who were left behind —wives soon to be widows.

‘ Very graphically, too, did she describe the next day's events, when women many of whom too agitated to change their attire, were still elegantly dressed—made their way somehow towards the field of battle, returning in the army waggons, supporting the beads of the wounded on their knees, bathing their brows, and binding up their wounds, while a small steady rain poured down on the faces begrimed by powder which yet allowed their pallor to be seen.

‘ I once met at a dinner party the winow of an officer—l forget the name —who fought nt Waterloo, and the lady narrated her experience of the ‘ afterbattle ' scene. For some reason she had to cross the field of Waterloo while it was still strewn with the dead, and for this purpose she was blindfolded and placed on horseback, the steed being led by a trooper. ******

* She held a handkerchief to her nose—steeped, I thing she said with vinegar—and not until she had reached an acclivity nearly a mile from the scene of carnage was the bandage removed from her eyes. Then she looked back, when the field of Waterloo appeared like a field of tombstones, for the bodies were all stripped of clothing, and shone white in the sunshine like stones. ’lhe camp following ghouls had done their work effectually.’

The man who always ‘ speaks what he thinks ’ usually thinks ‘ darn,’ and the woman who always tells the truth tells eight unpleasant ones out of every ten, on an average.

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