W. E. B. MILLER. 
186 
ble for them to escape punishment until they were released. 
The method employed was the actual cautery by most all of 
the operators in that section. 
Both fillies and colts were run through the stocks, and all 
were branded with the owner’s brand, and the colts castrated; all 
would then be turned out at large on the ranche with no after 
treatment, or perhaps scarcely a thought of them again until the 
next rounding up season came around. 
When a stallion was in the stocks, the men with a branding 
iron would work on one side, while at the same time the castra- 
tor, with his cautery or clamps (whichever method he used) 
worked upon the other, and between the two the poor colt 
would not know which to try to get away from, even if it were 
possible. 
Sometimes the animal would drop down and half hang him¬ 
self before the operation was half completed, but the operators 
would go right on with their work just the same, with the ani¬ 
mal hanging by the neck until the operation was completed. I 
remember of seeing one or two break their necks in struggling 
to get away, but as a rule they would all scamper off as fast as 
possible when the bars were loosened. 
I often asked to be allowed to experiment, and soon found 
that I could easily perform the operation, and that it was just 
as readily done, or even more so, than any other, and I soon 
learned to like it better. 
Later on in 1869, I returned to the East to New Jersey, and 
when I informed my father and others that I was castrating 
stallions standing, they regarded me very much in the same 
light that I did the Texan a few years before. 
I told them the proof of the assertion was in demonstrating 
it as a fact, in order to do so, however, I was compelled to pur¬ 
chase (or agree to pay) for an old ten dollar stallion to become 
a martyr to science. No one who owned a good horse 
was willing to let me experiment on their stock (as they 
said). 
The operation, with the animal standing, is, in my opinion * 
