434 STELLA B. VINCENT 



present although Krall said they sometimes did correct their 

 answers voluntarily. Why will not Krall submit to a committee 

 asked one ? Claparede answered " Krall will not put his horses 

 at the entire disposition of a commission because a commission 

 by its nature would alter the character of the responses, intro- 

 duce new factors, and suppress under the pretense of control 

 the very elements essential for the response." Buttel-Reepen 

 had said that he never saw any spontaneous work of any kind. 

 Claparede was asked here if he ever saw any. He said perhaps 

 the changing from one foot to the other which the animals did 

 in counting units and tens was spontaneous. 



The society discussed the mathematical features at some 

 length. It was emphasized that it was impossible for an animal 

 to get at the results in the time which it took them by any of 

 the ordinary- operations of arithmetic. They exceeded in abil- 

 ity the finest mathematicians. Krall never would show any of 

 the steps of the work. A man would take years to acquire this 

 ability. How was the horse trained. Mathematicians say that 

 a brain that can extract the fifth root of 147,008,443, should 

 know that even numbers have even roots and that the fourth 

 power of 10,000 cannot be 2. There seems to be a general feel- 

 ing that the errors do not increase with the difficulty of the 

 problem. M. Plate, however, who took a stenographer with 

 him on his visit says that in his records they did so increase. 

 Claparede's request for simple problems was refused. Some 

 thought that this was because mistakes in very difficult prob- 

 lems would be excused while errors in a simple problem would 

 not be. But the general feeling was that if Herr Krall insisted 

 that this was an intelligent process comparable with that of men 

 he should show its mechanism. 



A German protest against the assumptions of Krall was made 

 at the International Congress of Zoology at Monaco. It was 

 signed by Bethe, Biihler, Dorflein, Ettlinger, Forel, Freund, 

 Lippman, Semon, Wundt, Tschermak, Wasmann, and others. 

 They say that the doctrines of Krall and his adherents contradict 

 the conceptions of evolution and are irreconcilable with the 

 facts established by scientific physiology of the senses and by 

 experimental and animal psychology: that such movements will 

 serve to discredit any careful work in animal psychology; that 

 the facts are considered by the undersigned as not proven and 



