BROGGS' EXPERIMENT.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 23, 18 May 1876, Page 2

BROGGS' EXPERIMENT.

•v.. ——• I ■■cV [" ¥olo Mail. "'] j Broggs, who - lives in Elliot's Southern j Addition, ran across tlie item the other] day that fC at' liight a horse would refuse to step on or over the body of a man lying in the road, but, as if impelled by instinct, would stop, and remain motionless, till the matter should be investigated." Grave doubts as to the truth of this statement arose in Broggs' mind, and to settle matters for himself he resolved to give the tiling a practical test. ISTow, Broggs has no horse, but does own a very intelligent and frisky mule, so he thought it. just as well to try the experiment with him. There is a narrow laile leading from the clover patch to the water trough, and he sent his little son Bobby to open the gate and turn out the mule ; meanwhile, Broggs lay down full length across the lane, assuming an apparently lifeless attitude. The mule had been kept in the pasture all day, and consequently was very dry ; so lie came waltzing down the lane at a great rate, and everything denoted a fair trial of the test. And so it was : but not exactly as Broggs would have desired, although it confirmed liim in his scepticism. When within a yard or two the mule perceived the prostate form of his master, and with an explosion of sound which was a compromise between the shriek of a locomotive and the yell of a frightened mania, he bowed up his back, flung his tail to |the breeze, elevated himself about 15ft. in the air, and with all four feet in a bunch, lit on the pit of Broggs' "bread-basket." Then, with a fiendish laugh, he suddenly spread out his feet with a scraping, lacerating sound, and was off like a flash, not omitting, however, to give the experimenter a parting kick in the small of his back as he departed. The price of the mule did not near pay the doctor's bill.