EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
231 
and trembled. .From that time she became very tractable. Another gentle- 
man also breathed into her nostrils, and she evidently enjoyed it, and kept 
putting up her nose to receive the breath. 
“ On the following morning she was led out again. She was perfectly 
tractable, and it seemed to be almost impossible to frighten her. 
“ A circumstance which, in a great measure, corroborated the possibility 
of easily taming the most ferocious horses, occurred on the next day. A 
man, on a neighbouring farm, was attempting to break-in a very restive colt, 
who foiled him in every possible way. After several manoeuvres the 
amateur succeeded in breathing into one of the nostrils, and from that 
moment all became easy. The horse was completely subdued. He suffered 
himself to be led quietly away with a loose halter, and was perfectly at 
command. He was led through a field in which were four horses that had 
been his companions. They all surrounded him ; he took no notice of them, 
but quietly followed his new master. A surcingle was buckled on him, and 
then a saddle, and he was finally fitted with a bridle. The whole experi- 
ment occupied about an hour, and not in a single instance did he rebel. 
“ On the next day, however, the breaker, a severe and obstinate fellow, 
took him in hand, and, according to his usual custom, began to beat him 
most cruelly. The horse broke from him, and became as unmanageable as 
ever. The spirit of the animal had been subdued but not broken.” 
In these several things we have the basis of Mr. Rarey’s 
system. As we have said before, we pretend to no knowledge 
of the details nor of the adjuncts ; it is the principle which 
we are explaining. 
We shall now proceed to show that others have been as 
great proficients in the practice as Mr. Rarey, for we think 
we have said enough to prove that there is nothing new or 
wonderful in his system. 
It has become almost a “ household word” that things run 
in cycles, and that each new event is not so in reality, but only 
in appearance. Horse taming in all its perfection would seem 
to make its circle in about fifty years, as at that distance of 
time Sullivan, the “ Irish Whisperer,” was in the zenith of his 
glory. The late Mr. James Castley, veterinary surgeon to the 
12th Lancers, in an excellent paper on the “ Habits and 
Vices of Horses,” published in this journal nearly thirty 
years since, quoting from the Rev. Mr. Townsend’s ‘ Statis- 
tical Survey of the County of Cork,’ says that — 
“ James Sullivan, the whisperer, was a horse-breaker at Cork ; an igno- 
rant awkward rustic of the lowest class. He gained this singular epithet 
by an extraordinary art of controlling in a secret manner, and taming into 
the most submissive and tractable disposition, any horse or mare that was 
