TAMING HORSES. 81 



OBSERVATIONS UPON HORSES IN GENERAL s 

 AND WHAT LED ME TO THE DIS- 

 COVERY OF BREAKING THEM 

 IN A SHORT TIME. 



The first experiments I made upon wild horses, 

 in order to break them in a shorter time than that 

 usually employed to that end, consisted in the ap- 

 plication of different kinds of smells, such as opium, 

 the oil of cummin, assafoetida, that callous sub- 

 stance called the spur which grows upon the in- 

 side of a horse's fore-legs, the sweat from a man's 

 arm-pit, mare's milk, &c., &c. Opium has but 

 little effect upon a horse, even if he smells it a 

 considerable time. But of all these substances, no 

 one tends so much to intoxicate, and even sicken, 

 not only a horse but a man, as that taken from the 

 horse when smelled of for any length of time. 

 Any one who may doubt the veracity of what I 

 here assert, can be easily convinced by experience, 

 if he will. In the next place, the sweat from the 

 arm-pit has a tendency to render a horse sleepy, 



