44 THE AET OF TAMING HCRSES 



motions, and study his nature. If he is frightened at 

 the object, he will not rest until he has touched it with 

 his nose. You will see him begin to walk around the 

 robe and snort, all the time getting a little closer, as if 

 drawn up by some magic spell, until he finally gets 

 within reach of it. He will then very cautiously stretch 

 out his neck as far as he can reach, merely touching it 

 with his nose, as though he thought it was ready to fly 

 at him. But after he has repeated these touches a few 

 times, for the first time (though he has been looking at 

 it all the while) he seems to have an idea what it is. 

 But now he has found, by the sense of feeling, that it is 

 nothing that will do him any harm, and he is ready to 

 play with it. And if you watch him closely, you will see 

 him take hold of it with his teeth, and raise it up and 

 pull at it. And in a few minutes you can see that he 

 has not that same wild look about his eye, but stands 

 like a horse biting at some familiar stump. 



Yet the horse is never so well satisfied when he is 

 about anything that has frightened him, as when he is 

 standing with his nose to it. And, in nine cases out of 

 ten, you will see some of that same wild look about him 

 again, as he turns to walk from it. And you will, 

 probably, see him looking back very suspiciously as he 

 walks away, as though he thought it might come after 

 him yet. And in all probability, he will have to go back 

 and make another examination before he is satisfied. 

 But he will familiarize himself with it, and, if he should 

 run in that field a few days, the robe that frightened him 

 so much at first will be no more to him than a familiar 

 stump. 



We might very naturally suppose from the fact of the 

 horse's applying his nose to everything new to him, that 

 he always does so for the purpose of smelling these 



