MESMERISING HORSES.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2371, 18 June 1892, Page 3

MESMERISING HORSES.

Mr Ritchie, managing director and. chairman of the Royal Aquarium board of directors, ever on the alert for something to tickle the popular palate, has put out an exceptionally varied programme bristling with sensational novelties, foremost anong them being an announcement that Signor Peyrani, an animal inesmerist never previously seen in London, would give a marvellously good show by experimenting without cruelty on a horso, and reducing the animal under supposed hypnotic influence, to absolute subjectiou. Signor Peyrani, however he managed to bring about the result, apparently, with, the aid of hypnotic passes, paused < IU exceptionally spirited and frisky animal, which was brought upon the stage, to assume the cataleptic state precisely as Professor Germane, in another part of the building, operated on human beings of his own selection. The horse in question is, in the first instance, placed in sitting posture on a chair at an angle of about 45 deg. After Peyrani proceeds for- some minutes with mysteriqus manipulation over the equine siibject's head, eye-balls, neck, haunches, and back, the animal gradually slides from an upright position, and falling sidewards on the stage flooring, remains at first immovable and seemingly helpless. By-and-bye he is rolled over on to his back, and the professor causes him to place both his fore and hind legs unsupported in a parpen dioular position, to bring the former, without any joint bending, into immediate contiguity with the latter, and to do various other movements which one is accustomed witness at mesmeric seances where patients of either the male or female sex are operated upon. Many of the horsft'-s actions "are identical wjth what the circus arena has made us familiar when Ducrow, Astley, Cook, Sanger, and other experts showed to what perfection intelligent horses huvj? be brought, but Peyrani's pflpi} them far and away more or less an interesting performance, and when the auimr.l became released from the mesmeric trance or whatever was the condition, it seemed none the worse for the ordeal. Certainly there was no cruelty of any kind to be noticed in the professor's mode of treatment. The vast assemblage, which filled every part of the building, were loud and enthusiastic in their applause. Mark Lane Express.