140 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



has described experiments which M. Defoy 

 tried with his apparatus upon some vicious 

 and dangerous horses at the stables of the 

 Omnibus Company. An Hungarian horse, 

 which was considered unsafe to shoe, was 

 brought up to the forge, making evident 

 manifestations of his perversity. In a few 

 minutes after the current was applied to 

 him he allowed himself to be caressed on 

 the shoulders and back, then let his legs 

 be touched and his hind-feet raised ; and, 

 finally, suffered the workmen to change his 

 shoes without being restrained or showing 

 any further opposition to the proceedings. 

 A trial of the apparatus was also made in the 

 presence of the director of the Cab Company 

 of Paris upon some horses which it had till 

 then been impossible to shoe. They all yield- 

 ed to its influence. One of them was accus- 

 tomed to roll on the ground, strike out, and 

 resist in every possible way. On the first 

 application of the currents, says the director 

 in his report, "To my astonishment they 

 lifted his feet without any great difficulty ; 

 at the second, he was as easy to shoe as if 

 he had never opposed the least resistance. 

 The animal was conquered." M. Defoy ex- 

 hibited before the editor of "' La Nature " 

 a dangerous horse, which he arrested in- 

 stantly after it had sprung into a gallop, 

 by turning the handle of the magneto-elec- 

 tric apparatus. The result is not obtained 

 by any violent or painful action. The current 

 is not strong enough to stupefy the animal ; 

 it rather produces in him astonishment, and 

 a disagreeable but not painful sensation of 

 an electrical pricking. The editor of " La 

 Nature " has received the current from the 

 apparatus without experiencing inconven- 

 ience. There is nothing in the process to 

 recall the barbarous methods formerly used 

 to subdue animals by force or violence, 

 which hurt them in body and temper. M. 

 Defoy has also invented an electrical stick 

 or switch, which is not less ingenious than 

 his bit. It is a riding-whip containing two 

 conducting wires, which are insulated by 

 leather. The wires terminate in two points 

 set perpendicularly to the whip, and are put 

 in connection, as in the case of the bit, by 

 means of a magneto-electric apparatus. If 

 the horse is in the habit of rearing, it is 

 ' enough to jog him with the legs as he is 

 preparing to rise, and at the same time ap- 

 ply the points of the electric stick to the 



top of his shoulders. He will immediately 

 subside and let his head down. So, when a 

 horse tries to turn around, the application of 

 the current to that side of his face toward 

 which he is about to turn will cause him to 

 stop immediately. With the help of this 

 little instrument M. Defoy is able in a little 

 while to make a horse obey all his wishes. 



Automatism in Portrait-painting. Dr. 



Gaetan Delaunay, in a recent article on this 

 subject, writes that he has often observed 

 that a designer making an extemporaneous 

 sketch of a head involuntarily reproduces 

 his own portrait ; and that, having made a 

 scientific study of the fact, he has reached 

 conclusions which are curious, though they 

 are not fully demonstrated. He has been 

 informed by teachers of drawing, painters, 

 and designers, of whom he has made inqui- 

 ries, that a person tracing with a pencil 

 figures of spontaneous conception will al- 

 ways produce the same head unless he is 

 copying from or imitating a model. M. Luys, 

 professor in the Medical Faculty at Paris, 

 states substantially the same principle in 

 his work on the brain, and explains it by a 

 theory of automatism, or habit. It is illus- 

 trated in the works of the French carica- 

 turists. A degree of resemblance may be 

 traced between the design and the designer, 

 whether we consider the work as a whole or 

 in its parts. English painters, endeavoring 

 to represent Frenchmen, give them English 

 characteristics, and French painters invest 

 their figures of foreigners with a French air. 

 So painters of every country impart some of 

 their own national features to their pictures 

 of foreign life, to such a degree that we can 

 generally recognize the nationality of the 

 artist from them. We can not explain the 

 fact better than by supposing that all paint- 

 ers are subject to an irresistible tendency 

 to reproduce their own ethnographic type. 

 Sex exercises a similar influence ; little girls 

 amusing themselves at drawing will gener- 

 ally be found making female figures, little 

 boys male figures. Dr. Delaunay has also 

 observed that an artist seeking to repre- 

 sent a woman would always draw the same 

 woman, and has learned from designers that 

 the woman who thus persistently came from 

 their pencil was, of the type which they 

 preferred to all others, the one who figured 

 in their dreams. Rubens is quoted as say- 



